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WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS 



Within College Walls 



BY 

CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING 

President of Adelbert College and of Western Reserve Ufiiver- 

sity. Author of ''^ American Colleges: Their Students and 

Work": '' Reading of Books'': ''The Working 

Church'': Joint-Author of ''The Family: 

An Historical and Social Study ^''^ etc. 



%T 18 im\ 



NEW YORK 
THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 

740 AND 742 Broadway 



.„ _ I 



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xp:^i^ 



Copyright, 1893, 

BY 

The Baker «& Taylor Co. 



ROBERT DRUMMOND, ELECTROTYPER AND PRINTER, NEW YORK. 



^ 



TO 

/ID^ ffatber an& /IDotber< 



CONTENTS. 



I. The College and the Home... 9 

II. The Good of Being in College 21 

III. The College Forming Character 34 

IV. Certain College Temptations 53 

V. College Government 70 

VI. Play in College 94 

VII. Simplicity and Enrichment of Life in 

College ii5 

VIII. The College and the Church 125 

IX. The College Fitting for Business 148 

X. The Pre-eminence of the College Grad- 
uate 156 

7 



WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



I. 

THE COLLEGE AND THE HOxME. 

It is a serious day when the child leaves 
home for college. It is serious for the 
child, serious for the home ; serious too 
for the college. It is serious for the child, 
for the departure stands for an increasing 
independence and individuality, to result 
finally in absolute responsibility. It is seri- 
ous for the home, for it represents the be- 
ginning of that change to which each family 
comes of the separation of its members 
in order to kindle the ancestral fire on new 

hearthstones. It is serious for the college, 

9 



lO WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

for it lays on the college responsibilities 
which the parent has hitherto born. Glad 
day, too, if serious, is the day of de- 
parture. For the child glad, for he is 
able to enter into the best conditions 
in preparing himself for the highest work ; 
for the parent glad, for he is able to offer 
to his child the best conditions ; and for 
the college glad, for the college is to aid 
the parent and to aid the child in attain- 
ing the worthiest aims by the worthiest 
methods. 

The purpose of the best home and of 
the best college is identical. It is the 
purpose than which none is more 
precious. It is the purpose of making 
the character of the student-child strong 
and pure and noble. The aim of every 
parent and of every college officer is, I 
venture to say, to give to each one 
committed to their charge knowledge 
without pedantry, self-reliance without 
arrogance, gentleness without weakness, 
hopefulness without creating visionaries, 



THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME. II 

a discipline of the intellectual nature 
without drying up the emotional nature, 
an enrichment of the emotional nature 
without making soft the intellectual, a 
training for life in this Avorld without 
unfitting one to live in the other world, 
and a training for life in the other world 
without unfitting one to live in the 
present^ an enlargement of the whole 
character without self-consciousness, the 
making of working power without the 
making of an incapacity for leisure. 
These are bare suggestions of the aim 
which the college and the home more or 
less consciously are holding before their 
younger members. They both write 
Character above their gates. 

Yet it is possible that the college may 
be asked to receive the son or the 
daughter of a home in which such ideals 
do not command. Aims social or 
pecuniary may have ruled. Arrogance 
and weakness, strength of will without 
strength of judgment, self-consciousness 



12 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

with smallness of character, force of appe- 
tite without force of intellect, may repre- 
sent the outcome of the training of a 
home in its son or daughter. Such a son 
or daughter the college is asked to re- 
ceive. The college is asked to receive 
them and, by a tacit if not a declared 
understanding, is asked to regenerate them. 
It is asked in four years of thirty-six 
weeks each to undo the doing of eigh- 
teen years of fifty-two weeks each ; it is 
asked to remove many of the standards 
which parents have half consciously been 
holding before their children, and to erect 
noble and nobler symbols of life and 
duty. Some boys go to college and go 
to the — Devil. Some girls go to college 
and become simpletons. Is it any 
wonder? Some parents are asking too 
much of the college ; they are asking 
what they do not ask of themselves. 
They are asking the college to do for 
their sons and daughters what they them- 
selves have not done. The college cannot 



THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME, 1 3 

do much in ?/;^?doing parents' training. 
The college can do much in adding to 
parents' training. If that training has 
been the worthiest, the college summons 
all its resources of personal association 
and of intellectual discipline to continue 
this worthiest training. If that training 
has not been the worthiest, the college is 
still to call up all its forces to atone so 
far as possible for the past, to make 
worthy the future, of the student, . 

In gaining these aims, thus indicated 
as identical, the home and the college 
make use of the same means, measures, 
and methods. What may be called the 
atmosphere is recognized as equally valu- 
able in each. Rules, too, in each hav^e 
their place ; and principles can no more 
be eliminated from the college than elimi- 
nated from the life of the individual. 
But the two comprehensive forces used 
alike in the home and the college are 
truth and personality. Truth, knowing 
things as they are, carries along with 



14 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



itself a sense of sincerity and of reality, 
a contempt for sham which are, of the 
utmost worth in the formation of charac- 
ter. Personality, the influence of person 
over person, bears along w^ith itself the 
strength of character and of love. Per- 
sonality is formed by personality. We 
love those who love us ; those whom we 
love love us. The college employs these 
two agencies — truth and personality ; so 
does the home. In the books it sets for 
the students to read, in the teachings it 
offers to him, it impresses truth ; but in 
the man who is the teacher, in the man 
behind and before and around the 
teacher, in the man who moves with 
the students, personality is the forming 
force. Lacking either of these elements, 
the college is weak ; having them both, 
the college is strong, — and stronger as it 
has them in larger amounts and fitting 
proportions. The home, relatively to the 
college, influences more through person- 
ality than through the presentation of 



THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME. 1 5 

truth. The college, relatively to the 
home, influences more through the truth 
than through personality ; learning for 
knowledge and for discipline is more im- 
mediately present as an end. In both 
college and home, both truth and per- 
sonality are necessary. Truth without 
personality is lifeless, of small worth in the 
development of character ; personality 
without truth is a blind guide, leading 
either to the death of the precipice of 
sudden moral ruin or to the death of 
the desert of continued and hopeless 
wandering. 

The relation of the college to the 
student, as the relation of the parent 
to the child, is suggested in the word 
trustee. 

The college is a trustee of most im- 
portant relations. It is put in trust of 
character. If to an Atlantic captain are 
intrusted the lives of his passengers 
for a week, to a college are intrusted 
the intellectual, ethical, spiritual interests 



1 6 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

of human beings for four years. The 
college cannot be held responsible for 
these interests, as is the trustee of pe- 
cuniary trusts for the keeping of these 
trusts. These trusts have no power of 
their own. But college men and women 
have wills. No college can make charac- 
ter as the sculptor makes a statue. Yet 
it is true that the college is put in 
charge of the most worthy concerns of 
human spirits. 

The boy or girl places his intellectual 
character in the keeping of the college. 
He has so great a confidence in the 
college that he believes the college can 
do better for his character than he him- 
self can. The college is requested by 
the very act of his entrance to train the 
intellect to think — to think with compre- 
hensiveness, with insight, with accuracy, 
with swiftness. The parent intrusts his 
child to the college because he is con- 
vinced that the college can do better for 
his child for a time than he can him- 



THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME, 1 7 

self ; the college can train the intellect 
better than can the home, the professor 
better than can the mother. 

The college is also a trustee for the 
moral standards of the student. The 
differences among students of different 
colleges in respect to questions of moral 
conduct are most diverse. The standards 
in one college may be low, in another 
high. The men of one college seem 
hardly to be awake to the fact of moral 
differentiations ; the men of another are 
m.ore impressed with moral truths than 
with purely intellectual. The point of 
view is ethical. Their intellectual measure- 
ments have a moral element. It is not too 
much to say that a college fails, if it fail 
to reveal the path of duty as the way 
every soul should go in ; that it fails, if 
it fail to magnify virtue and the virtues ; 
that it fails, if it fail to teach the excel- 
lence of justice, the beauty of temperance, 
the nobility of courage, the grandeur of 
sacrifice for highest aims. 



1 8 WITHIN COIIEGE IV A LIS. 

The college is also a trustee for the 
Christian character of the student. This 
trust it receives with hesitation and yet 
with rejoicing: with hesitation, knowing 
the seriousness of the responsibility ; with 
rejoicing, for it already knows by a pro- 
phetic vision the greatness of the work it 
can do for the betterment of Christian 
character. The college is constantly called 
to stand in the place of the parent ; but 
in no one relation is this vicariousness 
more constant than in respect to the 
ennoblement of Christian character. The 
boy of sev^enteen may come to the col- 
lege with notions of Christian truth loose 
and vague ; the man of twenty-one should 
leave college with ideas compact and dis- 
tinct. The boy may come having narrow- 
ness of vision and blindness of prejudice ; 
he should leave seeing in breadth of 
vision, with justice, with comprehensive- 
ness. He may come bearing a faith 
feeble, hesitating — a crutch ; he should de- 
part having a faith which is a wing to 



THE COLLEGE AND TILE HOME. I9 

bear him. The Christian character be- 
comes more Christian and more charac- 
teristic in the college. It gains solidity, 
force, vigor. The articulation of its parts 
becomes more exact — intellect, feeling 
will, conscience becoming better adjusted 
to each other. It ceases to be a manu- 
facture, beginning to be a growth. True 
it is that men have found college their 
Waterloo of defeat. But to the true soul 
it is rather a Waterloo of victory — a place 
of hard fighting with moral and spiritual 
enemies, but a place of triumph, of 
triumph whose issues are as lasting as 
life. 

It may also be said that the college 
is the trustee of the future of the stu- 
dent. It is not true that these four years 
determine life with the certainty of fore- 
ordination. Men have wasted these years 
who have m^ade the following years fruit- 
ful. But it is true that these years 
establish a probability of the nature of 
the following. It is true that these years 



20 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

help to determine the nature of the fol- 
lowing. Indolence in college becomes 
laziness in life ; dissipation in college, in- 
tellectual, moral, becomes weakness in life; 
nearsightedness in college becomes blind- 
ness in life. Life is often the harvesting 
of college-sown seed. We follow no ex- 
ample so constantly as that set by our- 
selves. The qualities of endurance, pa- 
tience, enthusiasm, accuracy, which a col- 
lege is supposed to discipline in their 
callow stages, are prophetic of the posses- 
sion of the same qualities as the bones 
and sinews of the body of character. 
Such qualities the college is set to train. 
The opposite of such qualities the college 
is set to crush. The college is therefore 
put in trust w^ith each student's future. 



THE GOOD OF BEING IN COLLEGE. 21 



11. 



THE GOOD OF BEING IN COLLEGE. 

What is a college education good for ? 
is the question often and bluntly asked. 
I make bold to answer it, and also quite 
as bluntly as it is asked. 

College education lengthens the period 
of youth ; it prolongs the time of prep- 
aration for life. If ^*to prepare us for 
complete living " is the function of educa- 
tion — and no one would find fault with 
this definition of Herbert Spencer — it is 
well to make that preparation as good as 
it can be. The more important the duty 
to which God calls any creature, the 
longer the time of preparation he gives. 
A lamb stands and walks from the hour 
of its birth; a child takes a year to learn. 
The height of any creature in the scale of 



22 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

being is measured by the period of its 

adolescence. The lengthening or shorten- 

* 
ing of this period indicates and neces- 
sitates the raising or the depressing of 
the scale of being. The boy who does 
not go to college begins life at eighteen 
or before ; the boy who goes to college 
begins life at twenty-two. The time of 
growth is lengthened four years — a large 
proportion of the whole period of growth. 
The worth of the means of growth is thus 
vastly increased. For the higher stages 
of culture are much more valuable than 
the lower. The more individual is a 
fine and strong and high individuality 
the more valuable are its best forces. For 
the development of the highest indi- 
viduality time is needed. Every man 
should make the time of preparing 
for life as long as may be. College 
gives to him four years of prepara- 
tion. 

College gives this preparation through 
wise methods and under favorable con- 



THE GOOD OF BEING EV COELEGE. 23 



ditions. The book and the man are the 
college. The book has supplanted tra- 
dition. The book is not only the inter- 
preter of the past, the book is the past. 
All past comes to the present in the 
book. The book is a timeless creation, 
or its only time is the present. The 
student prepares himself for the future 
through learning the past in the book. 
The book reads to him the experiences 
of the tens of thousands of men through 
the thousands of years. He becomes 
wiser than the ancients, for he has all 
their wisdom, plus the wisdom of his 
followers. The book is not simply, as 
Milton says, the ^Mife-blood of a master- 
spirit " ; the book is also the life-blood of 
the master-spirits of all the world, of 
all the past. The forty centuries do not 
look down upon the college man from 
their pyramidal heights ; the forty centur- 
ies in the book enter into him, possessing, 
training, inspiring. 

But the teacher as w^ell as the book is 



24 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



the college. The teacher is the force 
which makes the lengthening of the 
period of youth to be desired. It is not 
what is taught that makes the four years 
precious. It is not the teaching that has 
the highest value. It is the teacher which 
is the noblest power. Who would not 
like to have Socrates in the chair teach- 
ing even mathematics ! It is to be 
said that no finer gentlemen are to be 
met with than those who occupy the 
chairs of instruction in our better col- 
leges. Aad it is to be remembered that 
the young man or woman has these 
teachers as his intellectual guides in four 
of the most formative years. Is it not 
worth while to lengthen youth in or- 
der to come under such leadership? 

College education is also good to take 
self-conceit out of a man. Strong per- 
sonality is the good fruit of individual- 
ity, self-conceit the bad fruit ; and the 
bad fruit is common among young men. 
Of course, we know that ignorance is 



THE GOOD OF BEING IN COLLEGE. 2$ 



the cause of self-conceit, or it might be 
said to be the surname of self-conceit. 
If learning take away ignorance, it surely 
abolishes self-conceit ; if learning increase 
the feeling of the learner's ignorance 
through enlarging the boundaries of 
knowledge faster than is the approach to 
these boundaries, it also — usually succeeds 
in wiping out this vice of self-conceit. 
The Freshman is often the embodiment of 
self-conceit. The Sophomore is often the 
embodiment of self-conceit and of incipi- 
ent wisdom ; the self-conceit appearing in 
the second and last syllable of his name 
— the fool part, and the wisdom emerg- 
ing in the first syllable. The system of 
fagging and of hazing — outrageous and 
abominable as they are — have an origi- 
nally w^orthy aim. Their foundation is the 
self-conceit which belongs to the noviti- 
ate in school or college ; their aim is to 
take out this same self-conceit ; their 
method is the imposition of menial tasks 
and of humiliations of various sorts. The 



26 WITIIIX COLLEGE WALLS. 



method belongs to barbarians ; but the 
original aim is in the line of good 
education. I am the more inclined to 
write of this value of the college in the 
elimination of excessive self-esteem, for 
the ordinary opinion is that students are 
affected by this fault. I know that the 
bearing of students gives evidence that 
the ordinary opinion is true ; they seem 
-remote, haughty, at times supercilious. 
But when college men are subjected to 
the genuine tests of self-examination and 
of a willingness to do any work to which 
they are called, they are more free from 
this defect than any class of men. The 
high-school graduate shrinks more from 
putting on the overalls of apprenticeship 
than the bachelor of arts. 

College education, further, gives a cer- 
tain openness of mind and heart. Mat- 
thew Arnold said that a serious lack in 
the English nation was the lack of lucid- 
ity. Lucidity is an intellectual quality, 
but it has ethical and emotional affilia- 



THE GOOD OF BEING IN COLLEGE, 2/ 

tions. The college man has this quality 
more than most. Mr. Arnold also divid- 
ed society into three classes : an upper 
class, which is materialized, a lower class 
which is brutalized, and a middle class, 
which is vulgarized. From these three 
curses of being vulgarized, brutalized, ma- 
terialized, the college tends to give 
freedom. And the method by which the 
college achieves this freedom I call a 
certain openness of mind and heart. 
This openness of mind and heart is akin 
to largeness of character ; it is opposed 
to narrowness of any kind ; it is free- 
dom from the miserly spirit ; it is a 
willingness to receive light ; it is the 
appreciation of the best in men and 
things ; it embodies sympathy ; it is re- 
sponsive to the best ideals and w^orthiest 
methods ; it makes one liberal without 
looseness, and fosters the holding of 
opinions with firmness but without big- 
otr}^ The perils of the self-made man 
— and many self-made men have perished 



28 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

in the making through these perils — are 
narrowness and hardness. They have 
bought their success at the cost of the 
largeness of their mental consitution and 
of the tenderness of their heart. Heavy 
price to pay — some would say too heavy, 
others that the success is worth the 
price. But the college man is sel- 
dom called upon to pay this price. He 
is able to win, keeping his intellectual 
vision large, his heart warm, and his 
energies strong, without any faculty 
suffering. 

The worth of a college education is 
also seen in the high standards of charac- 
ter which it fixes. It tends to make 
right rules of measurement. It develops 
the sense of appreciation. It teaches the 
art of valuing. The college does this 
through its discipline of the intellect ; it 
does this also through its conscious or 
unconscious emphasis on the temporal 
and eternal verities ; it does this through 
its definite instruction, and also it does 



THE GOOD OF BEING m COLLEGE. 29 



this through its atmosphere. These 
standards which it sets up are, as I 
said, standards of character. They are 
not the idols of the forum or of the 
market ; they are not reputation or 
wealth. They are justice, courage, char- 
ity, temperance, truth ; they are the an- 
gular lines of the cardinal virtues, 
and also the curves and vanishing 
points of the graces of the best charac- 
ter. In his '' English Traits,'* Emerson 
says : 

" It is contended by those who have 
been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and 
Westminster, that the public sentiment 
within each of these schools is high- 
toned and manly ; that, in their play- 
grounds, courage is universally admired, 
meanness despised, manly feelings and 
generous conduct are encouraged ; that 
an unwritten code of honor deals to the 
spoiled child of rank and to the child 
of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, 
purges their nonsense out of both, and 



3<^ lVI77//y COLLEGE IVALLS. 



does all that can be done to make them 
gentlemen/* 

Such may be said to be the work of 
the American college. It is at once the 
most aristocratic and the most democratic 
of all American institutions: aristocratic 
in the establishing of the best principles 
and standards as the ruling forces ; dem- 
ocratic in treating every man like every 
other in respect to the dut}' of establish- 
ing these principles and standards in his 
own bosom. 

I allude now to but one more of the 
advantai^es of a collecre training-. College 
training fosters an intelligent and strong 
Christian faith. It is often whispered 
that the college is the hot-bed of in- 
fidelity. It is sometimes feared that as 
knowledge increases piety lessens, and 
that intellectual culture is the dry-rot of 
spirituality. Shame on such whisperings 
and fears I Shame that the study of 
the works of Omniscience should make 
men atheists ! No ; the college is the 



THE GOOD OF BEING IN COILEGE. 3 1 



place most favorable to the development 
of a faith strong as well as wise. Pres- 
ident Patton, of Princeton, said, preach- 
ing to his own students : 

^' I regard the conditions of your train- 
ing here as favorable in the highest de- 
gree to your religious life. You are re- 
ceiving a discipline of your powers that 
should save you from the sophistries to 
which the uneducated fall such easy vic- 
tims. You are acquiring a knowledge of 
the great subjects of debate, and an esti- 
mate of the men who have most right to 
be regarded as authorities respecting 
them, that will keep you from calling 
any man master whose only claim to 
such recognition is his entertaining dec- 
lamation. Besides that you are dealing 
with secular themes under Christian con- 
ceptions, and your attention is turned to 
the specific evidences that accredit those 
Christian conceptions. There is also an 
undergraduate sentiment represented by 
the ripest scholars and the men of 



3^ WITHIN- COLLEGE WALLS, 

highest intellectual rank among us that 
is not only favorable to Christian life, 
but also aggressively and earnestly inter- 
ested in Christian work. So that if your 
religious life is not strengthened and 
stimulated by your connection with the 
college the fault will not be with the 
college, but with you." 

The college represents a condition 
safer, far safer for the holding and de- 
veloping of a Christian faith than the 
office, the shop, the factory, the board 
of trade. Intelligence is more pious than 
ignorance, and the college is the place 
of intelligence. Associations are more 
pure in the college than in any place 
where men most do congregate. The 
college stands by the side of the home 
and the Church in the fostering of an 
intelligent and strong faith. 

What is a college education good for ? 
It is good, lengthening the period of 
youth, to prolong the time of prepara- 
tion for life ; it is good to take away 



TJ^E GOOD OF BEING IN COLLEGE, 33 

self-conceit ; it is good to give openness 
to mind and heart ; it is good to fix 
high standards of character; it is good 
to foster an intelHgent and vigorous 
Christian faith. 



34 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



III. 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER. 

The college is to discipline character. 
Its duty is as broad as the humanity of 
each person. The college is prone to be 
content with giving an intellectual training 
simply. It is too much inclined to be sat- 
isfied with making thinkers, learners, 
scholars. What the student learns in col- 
lege represents only a small share of what 
the college should give to him. The 
character, says Emerson, is higher than 
the intellect ; and the college in educating 
the lower is not to neglect the higher. 
When Matthew Arnold says, '' The true 
aim of schools of instruction is to devel- 
op the powers of our mind and to give 
us access to vital knowledge," he may be 
right and he may be wrong. He is right 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER, 35 

if by mind he means man, and by vital 
knowledge, knowledge that relates to all 
life. The college, appealing immediately 
to the mental part, is yet to train every 
part. The college is doing its duty only 
when it causes men to regulate appetite, 
to crush passion, to guide desires, to 
quicken affections, to prevent wrong, and 
to stimulate right, choices. Which is the 
more important : for the student to know 
how to decline virtus^ or to practise vir- 
tue ; to know the fundamental ethics of 
Kant, or so to regulate his conduct that 
it may worthily become a universal rule ; 
to demonstrate all the propositions of 
plane geometry, or to form his own char- 
acter along the lines of righteousness ? 
Shall the college teach us sciences, and 
never lift the ear to Him who is omnis- 
cient ? Shall the college teach us philos- 
ophy and psychology, and never quicken 
us to heed the responsibilities of free 
volition ? Shall the college teach us laws, 
and never whisper a syllable as to the 



3^ WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

existence of the Lawgiver ? Every insti- 
tution should in fact illustrate the truth 
that conduct, which is the exponent of 
manhood, is not simply three fourths, but 
even seven eighths of life. 

In this work of giving a complete equip- 
ment to manhood, it is not the subject 
of study w^hich is the chief agent of the 
college ; the professor makes the college 
more than the curriculum or the library. 
In forming character the college should 
have regard to the character and the life 
of those who sit in its chairs of instruc- 
tion. Much that is suggestive and signifi- 
cant is to be found in the little volume, 
^* How I Was Educated ; " but to me the 
most significant feature is that several of 
the contributors emphasize the value 
of their teachers above the value of 
the teaching of these teachers. It was 
from the teachers that the inspiration 
that is more important than instruction 
itself was obtained. A university has 
been called a collection of books. The 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER. 37 

remark is true ; but the remark is not so 
true as that the college is a collection of 
men. Not pedants, or pedagogues, or' 
buildings, but men, are to be sought. 
Character begets character ; manhood 
creates manhood. '' If," said President 
Mark Hopkins in an address at Williams 
College, '' right character is to be pro- 
duced in connection with an institution, 
it must be through the influence of 
those who have a right character.'* No 
name is more fragrant in the long list of 
teachers of this century on both conti- 
nents than the name of Arnold of Rugby. 
Some teachers have been more learned, 
some have been intrusted ^^ ith more con- 
spicuous commissions ; but none have done 
a nobler work for humanity in the forma- 
tion of character. His breadth of vision, 
his tenderness of conscience, his sympathy 
with the boy heart, his self-forgetfu!ncss, 
his hatred of the mean, his love for 
children and for God, made him the 
great teacher of our time. A man of 



38 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

the type of Dr. Arnold should sit in 
every college. From him the student 
would receive not only instruction, but also 
inspiration for acting worthily in every 
part in life. It was not simply Mark 
Hopkins the teacher, or Mark Hopkins 
the philosopher, but Mark Hopkins the 
man, that formed the character of the 
graduates of the college in Williamstown. 
In the current discussion as to the 

religious character and influence of col- 
lege we are inclined to forget that, more 
than by all the methods and means 
and every form of management, the col- 
lege is made Christian by the Christian 
teacher. If the professors be not Chris- 
tian, neither required attendance at church 
and daily prayers, nor affiliation of the 
college with a sect, nor the use of text- 
books on theology, has much worth in 
making the college Christian. The power 
of the man behind the book or the sub- 
ject which he teaches is much greater 
than the power of the book or the sub- 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARCATER. 39 



ject. In electing college studies, it has 
been said, one should elect rather teach- 
ers than studies. If this opinion be ex- 
treme, it is certainly true that the teacher 
has more influence in forming Christian 
character than his mere teaching. 

Most colleges would no more elect as 
professor one opposed to Christianity, or 
even indifferent to its claims, than they 
would elect one notoriously ignorant of 
the topic he would teach. Atheists, scep- 
tics, agnostics would not usually be se- 
lected as instructors in truth and right- 
eousness. But it is to be said that it were 
well for the college to emphasize more 
strongly not simply a Christian profession, 
but also aggressive Christian manhood and 
manliness in the person of its professors, 
with a view to the training of Christian 
manhood and manliness in the person of 
its students. For the college should be 
Christian in no narrow or technical sense. 
It should be Christian in that the Chris- 
tian attitude is that of the most vigorous 



40 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

morality, the broadest philanthropy, and 
the wisest charity; in that it represents 
the noblest motives, the purest sentiment, 
and the most aggressive righteousness. 
The college should be Christian because 
Christianity is, on naturalistic grounds, the 
survival of the fittest in religion, and be- 
cause, on other grounds, it is a divinely 
given system of truth for the control of 
conduct. It should be Christian because 
Christianity represents the finest type of 
manhood and of character. 

I would not be interpreted as arguing 
that every college professor should be a 
member of an orthodox or of any other 

church. I would not be understood as 
implying but that very worthy teachers 
may be found who fail to accept the tech- 
nical truths of Christianity. I would, how- 
ever, be understood to affirm that, if the 
college is to be Christian in its influence, 
no wealth of learning should be suffered 
to atone for poverty in the moral ele- 
ments of character. The very least which 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER, 4 1 

a college should demand is that the gen- 
eral influence of its teachers be sympa- 
thetic with Christian movements and loyal 
to Christian principles. The simplest con- 
dition is that at least its atmosphere be 
Christian. This atmosphere is formed by 
the character of its teachers. 

That the thought of thinking men is 
giving heartier assent to the proposition 
that the Christian teacher is the Christian 
college, I firmly believe. We are becom- 
ing convinced that no religious '' ways or 
means" can serve as a substitute. The 
college, in its influence over students, 
should occupy somewhat the position 
which Agassiz declared should be the ob- 
ject of the museums of natural history. 
In 1868 this great teacher wrote: 

** The great object of our museums 
should be to exhibit the whole animal 
kingdom as a manifestation of the Su- 
preme Intellect. Scientific investigation in 
our day should be inspired by a purpose 
as animating to the general sympathy as 



42 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



was the religious zeal which built the 
Cathedral of Cologne or the Basilica of 
St. Peter's. The time is passed when 
men expressed their deepest convictions 
by wonderful and beautiful religious 
edifices, but it is my hope to see, with 
the progress of intellectual culture, a 
structure arise among us which may be a 
temple of the revelations written in the 
material universe. If this be so, our 
buildings can never be too comprehensive, 
for they are to embrace the infinite work 
of Infinite Wisdom. They can never be 
too costly, for they are to contain the 
most instructive documents of Omnipo- 
tence." 

If a museum of birds and fishes and 
brutes has as its chief object the ^'mani- 
festation of the Supreme Intellect," a col- 
lege, composed of young men and w^omen, 
should have as its aim an object no less 
comprehensive or worthy. With its aim 
of the training of Christian manhood, it 
certainly should have Christian manhood 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER. 43 

in the person of its teachers. The lack 
of this manhood vitiates all other agen- 
cies and methods ; the possession of this 
manhood, worth more than all else, ren- 
ders other agencies vigorous and other 
methods efficient. Whoever admits that 
the moral character of the individual is as 
important as the intellectual would prob- 
ably also admit that it is the duty of the 
college to train the moral as well as the 
intellectual character of its students. If 
any one were prepared to deny that the 
college should endeavor to instruct and 
to improve the religious nature of its 
students, he would certainly not deny that 
the college owes a duty to those moral 
elements of manhood which are even 
more fundamental than the religious in- 
stincts. If any one should argue in favor 
of the removal of all those college laws 
w^hich usually exist as aids in the control 
of students, and should affirm that com- 
plete liberty is the best condition and 
means of promoting this control, he would, 



44 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

as the very basis of his plea, grant the 
importance of the moral character. If a 
man is more than a mere knowing ani- 
mal ; if he has feeling, appetites, desires, 
affections, instincts, passions, and the power 
of making choices ; if, furthermore, the 
college is designed to minister to other 
than the demands of the intellect, if its 
purpose is broader than to afford facilities 
for the gaining of knowledge and mental 
discipline, — then it becomes the duty of 
the college to train the moral character 
of its students. Whoever either know^s 
the history of American colleges, or con- 
siders the fundamental characteristics of 
human nature, and especially the demands 
which our modern life makes upon edu- 
cated men, will be more than willing to 
grant it is the duty of our colleges to 
discipline the moral as well as the intel- 
lectual character of their students. 

Yet, despite these axiomatic consider- 
ations, it is evident that a tendency exists 
among our colleges either to minimiize 



THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER. 45 

this duty or to neglect its performance. 
The enlargement of the courses of study 
over the improvement in the methods of 
instruction has seemed to degrade those 
characteristics of a college education which 
are not strictly intellectual. Religious im- 
pulses and influences have probably less 
strength than they have possessed at 
many periods. Endeavors to surround the 
students with a pure moral atmosphere 
have in certain colleges lost a vigor and 
constancy formerly possessed. But the 
custom of the selection of teachers and 
professors chiefly or merely upon intel- 
lectual grounds is perhaps the strongest 
indication that the colleges are inclined to 
abdicate their throne of ethical instruction. 
It is not to be said that those whose 
habits are corrupt or corrupting would be 
selected as teachers in any college ; but 
it is to be said, and w^ith emphasis, that 
the teachers are not chosen on the ground 
of their capacity for impressing moral 
ideas and ideals upon young men. Con- 



46 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

sidered in some degree this capacity may 
be, but the degree is confessedly shght. 
The professor should be a man who hves 
such a vigorous and earnest moral life 
that his scholars will be attracted toward 
it ; he should be one who entertains such 
ideals of character that his students will 
be urged toward their attainment. 

In collegiate administration it should 
be noted that character and the ability of 
forming character ought to be regarded 
as a most important element in the selec- 
tion of tutors and professors. This ability 
should not be subordinated, as too fre- 
quently in practice it is subordinated, to 
intellectual considerations. Not, of course, 
be it said, that professors shall have an 
intellectual armor less complete or less 
brilliant or less modern, but that they 
shall have a character more thoroughly 
fitted to arouse moral earnestness among 
their students. Not that there be fewer 
manly scholars, like Louis Agassiz, but 
that there be more men, and scholarly 



THE COLLEGE FORMLNG CLiARACTER. 47 

men, like Mark, and Albert, Hopkins. 
The principles of the administration of a 
college, and of which President Hopkins's 
character furnishes a noble illustration, 
are well set forth in the semi-centennial 
address already quoted from. President 
Hopkins said : 

'' No formal arrangement without Chris- 
tian men, no having or saying of prayers, 
w^ill avail anything without men who pray. 
Christianity is not a mere set of dogmas : 
it is Christ revealed in His perfect char- 
acter. He is the head of the race. He is 
not only the light of the world as a per- 
fect teacher in all that relates to character 
and ultimate destiny, but also a perfect 
example. He is the man. In His religion 
is the hope of the world. The greatest 
boon that can come to any one is to be 
brought into personal relation to this, and 
sympathize with Him by voluntary com- 
mitment and by having a character like 
His. Herein is the difference between the 
place of Christianity in a theological semi- 



48 VVITimV COLLEGE WALLS. 



nary and a college. In a college it should 
be so handled as to bear upon character 
without sectarianism. This can and ought 
to be done. Christianity is the greatest 
civilizing, moulding, uplifting power on 
this globe, and it is a sad defect in any 
institution of high learning if it does not 
bring those under its care into the closest 
possible relation to it, so far as it is 
such a power. Through it the students 
are to be trained in moral and spiritual 
gymnastics. \Miy not ? We here reach 
the broadest and most philosophical con- 
ception of education. It includes the 
whole man. If man is to be educated 
physically and intelligently because he 
has a physical and intelligent nature, why 
should he not be educated and trained 
morally and spiritually because he has a 
moral and spiritual nature ? I see no 
reason why there should not be in a 
college, and enter into the very concep- 
tion of it, those who are engaged in the 
higher gymnastics. If men are to be 



THE COLLEGE FORMLNG CHARACTEJ^. 49 



trained to be strong in muscle, why not 
to be strong in the Lord ? If to wrestle 
with each other, why not with w^icked- 
ness ? If to carry on mimic fights and 
boxing, why not to fight the good fight 
of faith ? If to gain the crown of victory 
in contests with each other, why not ' an 
incorruptible crown ' ? If to run races 
in the gymnasium and on the campus, 
why not to run the race that is set be- 
fore them in which they are * compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses ' ? 
Why, in short, if they are to be trained 
in bodily exercise, that * profiteth little,' 
should they not be trained in ^ godliness, 
that is profitable unto all things * ? This 
broad conception of education has been 
the conception of it in this college in the 
past. If not personally recognized, it has 
pervaded its atmosphere, it has made min- 
isters of the Gospel and missionaries, aiid 
has a general uplifting power. It is the 
conception of education here to-day. I 
trust it will continue to be. If not, the 



50 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

^ — ■--— . I ■■ ■ !■ . ■-,_,-,- ■ ^_ I.I. ■^ — I — ■^■■■■^— i^i— — a 

glory of the college will have departed. 
If this college shall drop down into 
a merely secular spirit, in the train- 
ing of the lower parts of man's nature, 
so that it shall cease to be in sympathy 
with Him wdiose object it is to train to 
a perfect character that world which is 
symbolized on the missionary monument, 
it will no longer be Williams College."^ 
It is the teacher, it is the man more 
than the teacher, which makes the college. 
An institution lately invited to one of its 
important chairs a young minister who 
had no special knowledge of the depart- 
ment he would teach. Surprise was ex- 
pressed that some one thoroughly trained 
should not have received the appointment. 
The answer was : '' We want, first and 
foremost^ a man, and one who can make 
men." The answer was sound. For to 
the student the manhood of the professor 
is more significant than his scholarship. 

* Address delivered at fiftieth anniversary of becoming 
president of Williams College. 



THE COLLEGE FORMLNG CHARACTER. 5 1 

The student is influenced more by the 
professor than by the professorship, more 
by the man than by the professor. There- 
fore that superintendent of pubhc schools 
was wise who said : " I am not going to 
ask for deep learning as the first qualifica- 
tion of my teachers. I shall ask, first, for 
firm, high, noble character; second, for 
fine manners ; third, for sound learning ; 
fourth, for professional training." 

In a few colleges it may be felt that the 
professor is overstepping his proper func- 
tions in either aiming at or endeavoring 
to give more than an intellectual training. 
With such a feeling we believe that no 
parent or guardian of youth sympathizes. 
The father sends his son to college less, 
far less, to read Greek and history, to 
study philosophy and mathematics, than 
to fit that son to occupy with dignity 
and usefulness any position to which he 
may be called. Every father knows that 
in the acting well his part in life the 
general character of his son is more im- 



i2 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

portant than any one element of that 
character, even if that element be intel- 
lectual. Instead, therefore, of doubting as 
to their ria;ht to influence coUeg^e students 
along the line of moral character, we 
venture to believe it were well for pro- 
fessors to realize the duty which they 
thus owe not only to their students, but 
to the entire collegiate constituency and 
to the nation. 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 53 



IV. 

CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 

The college man is the best young 
man to be found beneath the sun. He is 
absent from home, yet he is at home 
with his companions. He meets few ladies, 
yet he has a knight's reverence for woman- 
hood. He is obedient to what he con- 
siders proper rules, but rebels against 
what is deemed improper restraint. He is 
vigorous in intellect, strong in conviction, 
yet he is sympathetic with the best in all 
life. He is conscious that he is richly en- 
dowed with mental gifts, and knows well 
his privileges ; but he is self-forgetful and 
self-sacrificing. Such a man must be 
subject to many and hard temptations. 

In the manner of the old preachers, I 
would first say what his temptations are 



54 V/ITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

not. It is frequently remarked that the 
college man is allured into the base in- 
dulgence of base passion. ^' The fast set ** 
is supposed to be a set at once pretty 
large and pretty fast at the college. I 
have some facts, elicited with labor and 
compiled with care, proving that the col- 
lege man is not as cold as ice. I wish 
the record v/ere less dark than it is. But, 
despite this evidence, I do believe, and 
believe upon evidence, that the morals of 
the American college student are cleaner 
than the morals of the young man in the 
office or behind the counter or at the 
bench. His life and associations belong to 
the realm of the intellect, not to the realm 
of the appetite. His discipline is a train- 
ing in that virtue the most comprehen- 
sive of all virtues — the virtue of self- 
control. He is able to trace more care- 
fully than most the relation of cause and 
effect in the sphere of moral action. He 
recognizes the penalties of base indul- 
gence. It is, therefore, my conviction that 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 55 

the college man is at once less tempted 
to the evil satisfaction of evil appetites 
and less indulgent toward this satisfaction 
than are most young men. 

The temptations of the college student 
belong to a realm which we think some- 
what his/her in moral value than the 
sensual. 

One of the temptations which besets 
the man in college is the tendency toward 
intellectual scepticism. All scepticism is 
either more or less intellectual. The life 
of the student is pre-eminently an intel- 
lectual life : it is a life in its early part of 
scholarship and relatively little thought ; it 
is a life in its latter part of relatively less 
scholarship and more thought. Upon him 
through both scholarship and thought are 
thrust for solution all those problems 
w^hich He at the foundation of being. 
The existence of God, the freedom of 
the individual will, the presence of evil in 
a moral universe, — to these and kindred 
questions he is compelled by the force of 



$6 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

his environment and of his own nature 
to give an answer. Such questions, put 
before him in a comprehensive shape, are 
new.. The difficulties in the way of giv- 
ing an answer such as would be in har- 
mony with early convictions are many 
and strong. So many and strong do 
these difficulties often seem to be, that 
they are sufficient to move him from 
the intellectual position he has long held. 
From unreasoning faith he is flung into 
reasoning doubt. His age as well as his 
study contributes to this result. He may 
have as a professor — though seldom — one 
who promotes his intellectual restlessness. 
He finds books, scores in number and 
able as the ablest, presenting the side of 
doubt with a persuasiveness born of con- 
viction as well as of scholarship. As a 
result he first becomes a sceptic in the 
original meaning of the word, and 
secondly he becomes a sceptic in its 
secondary meaning. This result is not 
to be understood as either inevitable or 



CERTAIX COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 5/ 

frequent ; but the tendency exists in most 
minds to a slight degree, in some minds 
to a strong degree, and in a few minds 
to an exceedingly powerful degree. 

From this lamentable result, as unneces- 
sary as it is lamentable, most college men 
are saved. They are saved from it by 
what may be called the perpendicular 
forces of their own mind ever tending 
toward belief in the spiritual verities. 
They are saved from it by the study of 
the best books upon these themes — and 
the books in favor of belief are better 
than the best books in favor of disbelief. 
They are saved from it by the personal 
influence and intellectual leadership of 
teachers. Scholarship is not sceptical ; 
thought is not sceptical. The college 
man, therefore, in scholarship more thor- 
ough and in thought more profound, 
than is his brother living without college 
walls ceases to be the victim of intel- 
lectual scepticism, and becomes the repre- 
sentative of spiritual belief. 



58 



WITHIX COLLEGE WALLS. 



A second temptation of the college stu- 
dent is an inclination toward Christian 
lethargy or religious indolence. This is 
probably the most comprehensive and pos- 
sibly the most dangerous allurement that 
assaults him. It is more common, I think- 
in the colleges of the East than in the 
colleges of the West ; but it affects most 
students in most colleges to some extent. 
It arises from the attention which the col- 
lege pays to things that are merely intel- 
lectual. The college is an agency for the 
training of character. One means of this 
agency, and the most conspicuous, is the 
use of the mind on certain subjects of 
knowledge. The college is ordained to 
tram the intellect, but to tram the intellect 
not for the sake of the intellect only, but 
as the intellect is a part of the whole man, 
which represents the supreme and largest 
aim. But the college student, and, indeed, 
the college professor, is prone to permit 
the purpose of the discipline of the intel- 
lect— a purpose more immediately present 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 59 

than the ultimate aim of the edification 
of character — to conceal this ultimate aim. 
The college man, moreover, as every man, 
seems to have a certain amount of force 
to put into any service. Therefore, as he 
thinks himself obliged to devote the large 
share of his force to intellectual pur- 
suits, he finds it easy for his Christian 
energies to become dormant. The emo- 
tional, the moral nature suffers for the 
time through this great attention paid to 
the intellectual. The same result occurs 
in the theological seminary. It is well 
known that the tone of piety among 
those preparing for the ministry is not so 
high as among those who are ministers. 
These undergraduates in theology are 
putting their forces into the intellectual 
aspects of Christian truth ; the emotional 
sides of their character — sides in which 
piety seems most to delight to manifest 
itself — are suffered to remain uncultivated. 
*' I am pained to say I am losing my 
Christian enthusiasm," remarked a Senior 



6o 



WITHIN COLLEGE JVALLS. 



in a college prayer-meeting. " I think I 
have been losing it," he continued, "ever 
since my Freshman year." It is not un- 
usual to hear college men express such a 
sentiment. I doubt not that most stu- 
dents believe they have less enthusiasm 
for Christian things on the day they re- 
ceive their diploma than on the day they 
received their papers of admission. They 
are probably less inclined to support 
either through attendance or through 
speech the class prayer-meeting in the 
Senior than in the Freshman year. They 
also are probably less intliiied to learn 
the "spiritual condition" of their cla.ss- 
inates. Their own spiritual vision is prob- 
ably less constantly directed toward them- 
selves in the last term of the last year of 
the course than in the first term of the 
first year. Such conditions and circum- 
stances have a certain va.' ;e as evidence 
of the decline of the Christian enthusiasm 
of college men. Such conditions and cir- 
cumstances college men, are inclined to 



CERTAIX COLLEGE TEMPTATWNS. 6 1 

believe prove that their Christian enthu- 
siasm has lessened ; and they infer that 
the college education is the cause of the 
lessening. 

It would be sad if the culture of the in- 
tellect should be coincident with, even if 
not the cause of, the hardening of the 
heart. It would be sad if the college 
which was established to train men as 
ministers should train men away from the 
ministry. It would be sad if the more 
college men knew, the less inclined they 
should be to include a know^ledge of God 
within the circle of knowledge ; and even 
if somewhat inclined to include a knowl- 
edge of God, it would be still more 
pitiable if they were less inclined to let 
the treasures of their love for Him increase 
with the increasing treasures of knowledge 
and culture. If a college education does 
tend to diminish Christian enthusiasm, the 
college education is either pursuing low 
ideals or is based on false methods or is 
employing unworthy agencies. 



62 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

Yet the impression prevails that a col- 
lege training does tend to lessen Chris- 
tian enthusiasm. Superficial and circum- 
stantial evidence tends to confirm the im- 
pression. But the impression is false. 

Enthusiasm is at once a mental and an 
emotional quality. Emotional enthusiasm 
is forth-putting, vociferous, noisy. It is 
self-assertive, lacks self-control, adopts the 
fantastic as easily as the fitting form of 
manifestation. It is not supported by the 
judgment. It is raw, sensitive, '' soft," as 
horsemen say of a colt. Such enthusiasm 
the college curbs, trains, lessens. Such en- 
thusiasm the college ought to curb, train, 
lessen. Such enthusiasm, if doing some 
good, does also more harm. Such en- 
thusiasm is the enthusiasm of the colt, 
spurring it to its death. Such enthusiasm 
requires control, guidance. The college 
gives control and guidance, forbidding its 
fantastic exhibitions, com.pelling it to run 
in proper channels toward proper goals. 
The controlling of such lawless enthusiasm 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS, 63 

gives the impression of its diminution, 
and of its diminution to a degree greater 
than the fact indicates. 

But Christian enthusiasm is also of the 
intellect and of the will as well as of the 
emotions. This enthusiasm is loyalty to 
Christian principle. It is willingness to fol- 
low the star of Duty, however remote the 
spot to which she leads or precipitous the 
path along which she gleams. It is the 
surrender of the whole man to the pur- 
poses of Christ. It is obedience to *'the 
heavenly vision." It is the confessed ob- 
ligation to preach ^^ the Gospel to them 
Vvdio are at Rome also," even if Rome is 
to prove to be one's Calvary. This Chris- 
tian enthusiasm is as silent as the move- 
ment of the stars, and as resistless, burning 
too with the steadiness of the planets. It 
has a sense of the fitness of things. It is 
not boastful. It puts forth no platform ; it 
marches to no crusade ; it flaunts no flag. 
Its onward goings are not thunderous, but 
of the still, small voice of truth. Such 



64 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



enthusiasm the college not only does not 
lessen, but does even develop. If a col- 
lege training means anyrhing in America, 
it means loyalty to Christian duty — a loy- 
alty as steady as time's flow, as hearty 
as the needs of humanity are desperate, 
as wise as a trained discrimination can 
teach, as mighty to overcome obstacles as 
are the obstacles great. Sucli loyalty the 
colleges, in the personal character of their 
officers no less than in the wisdom of the 
books studied, are daily teaching. Such 
loyalty is a principle more controlling of 
the Senior receiving his diploma than of 
the Freshman receiving his certificate of 
admission. Such loyalty is the larger and 
more precious part of Christian enthu- 
siasm. Christian enthusiasm, ip its essen- 
tial and permanent elements, is not les- 
sened, but magnified, by the education of 
the college. 

I know that thousands of Christian 
parents are at this hour in distress by 
reason of the fear that their sons and 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 65 

daughters in college are losing their spir- 
itual enthusiasm. From time to time as 
these children return home fathers and 
mothers think they detect a waning in 
things of the Spirit. May I be suffered 
to assure such parents that (if no im- 
moral offending have occurred) their dis- 
tress is unnecessary, that their fears are 
groundless ? The manifestation of the 
love of their children for Christ and for 
Christian things is changing, but the love 
itself is rather deepening than becoming 
shallow. Like the brook becoming the 
river, it is more quiet because it is deep- 
ening. The older children grow, the 
fewer the kisses they give their parents, 
but the more they love those parents ; 
loyalty to them is more loyal at the 
son's age of twenty-five than of fifteen. 
The loyalty of the college man to his 
Christ in his Senior year is less effusive, 
less emotional, than in his Freshman year, 
but it is deeper, stronger, steadier, less 
selfish, more profound in its hold on prin- 



66 WITHIN COILEGE WALLS. 



ciple, and wider in the application of its 
forces. It is such loyalty, like the river, 

" Strong without rage ; without o'erfiowing full/' 

which the college thinks it a duty, as it 
is a delight, to develop. 

The evil, therefore^ o{ this temptation 
is usually transient. For the culture of 
the intellect results in the culture of the 
emotional nature, and the emotional nature 
becomes more tender, more reverential, 
more strong in its affections, more 
noble in its aspirations, more confiding 
in its hopes, and more rich in its satis- 
factions, because of the culture of the 
intellect. The enrichment of the intel- 
lect of the Christian man insures the 
enrichment of his piety. Spiritual leth- 
argy and religious indolence are not 
the permanent results of the finest in- 
tellectual culture ; rather they are the 
results of a culture which is neither fine 
nor broad, neither profound nor high ; of 
a culture which has rather the conceit of 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 6/ 

knowledge than knowledge, and of which 
the superficiaHty is excelled only by its 
arrogance. Genuine intellectual culture 
never produces spiritual atrophy or per- 
manent spiritual lethargy. In time this 
culture gives force as well as wisdom to 
piety. We are commanded to love our 
God with our mind as well as with our 
heart. 

The most serious problem which the 
Christian college has set before it in these 
recent years lies in this region — the co- 
ordination of increasing intellectual culture 
with increasing spiritual culture. The col- 
leges must keep their windows open to 
al! intellectual light. No truth should be 
discovered but that each college should 
claim some share in the possession of the 
new and priceless treasure ; but the college 
is not for a single instant to lose sight 
of the fact that it is Christian, and that 
it was founded and endowed by either 
the munificence of wealth or the econo- 
mies of poverty for forming Christian 



6S WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

character in its students. It is, therefore, 
so to hold the truth and so to impress 
the truth that the manhood which it 
moulds may be vital with the spirit of 
Him who called Himself ''the truth." It 
is not to be feared but that this co-or- 
dination will ultimately be properly effect- 
ed ; but it is to be feared that in the 
process of making this adjustment either 
the cause of scholarship or the cause of 
religion may suffer. We may apprehend 
that some colleges may become so intent 
on the discovery and exhibition of truth 
that they will forget their purpose of 
forming Christian character. It seems to 
me that Harvard was several years since 
in peril of obscuring this purpose in its 
interest for its '' new courses " of study. 
It is a peril, however, which is far less 
evident to-day than a decade ago, and a 
peril which its president, its preachers, 
and many other officers are doing much 
to remove. On the other hand, we may 
apprehend that some colleges will be so 



CERTAIN COLLEGE TEMPTATIONS. 69 

solicitous as to the moral and Christian 
culture of their students — though it would 
be hard to think of such solicitude being 
too urgent — and so content with methods 
which have succeeded, that they may 
unduly hesitate to welcome new truth and 
new methods which are superior to the 
old. The college which is the most wise 
will avoid both perils and possess both 
excellences. That college will have the 
eye of its mind open to all that is true 
in the enlarging province of thought and 
scholarship ; it will also keep the right 
hand of its Christian faith firmly and 
gently resting in loving benediction upon 
the head of each of its students. 



70 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 



V. 

COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 

All men like to be their own masters. 
College men are men, and therefore pre- 
fer to be their own guides in matters of 
conduct. The college man abhors being 
the object of espionage. His feeling 
toward the spy is a union of con- 
tempt, hatred, and shame. His feeling 
is a natural one. His feeling deserves 
and receives sympathy. It is also safe 
enough to say that espionage defeats it- 
self. The student watched is usually able 
to circumvent the watchman. Prying 
watchfulness is a challenge for evading 
the watchman. The student's own sense 
of integrity is an inspiration to him to 
escape the spy, and the sympathy of his 
fellows in his evasion proves to be an aid 
and a comfort. 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT, 7 1 

Every one, however, both officer and 
student, would affirm that some super- 
vision of men in American colleges is 
necessary. Evidently to secure intellec- 
tual supervision is one of the fundamental 
and simple purposes of being in college. 
I think, also, there would be a general 
assent to the further proposition that su- 
pervision of conduct in at least a degree 
is wise. Young men between the ages 
of eighteen and twenty-two have not come 
to such power of judgment or self-mas- 
tery that it IS expedient to fling them 
into the manifold and trying conditions 
of the college w^ithout some eye to see 
them or some hand to point out the 
worthiest paths. The law itself contem- 
plates that the age of freedom shall not 
be earlier than the twenty-first birthday. 
In the absence of parental influence the 
college is to serve as guide, philosopher, 
and friend. 

The American college is beset by two 
movements. One is a tendency toward 



72 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

making the relation of the student to the 
authorities simply intellectual. In point of 
place this movement represents a relation 
between the officer and the student 
limited to the lecture-room ; in point of 
time this relation represents a relation of 
officer and student limited to the lecture- 
hour. The student may be an imp of 
darkness in character or behavior, but 
if at the time of a lecture or exami- 
nation he be an angel to receive and 
emit light of a proper quantity or quality, 
the demands of the officer are satisfied. 
Intellectual culture is, it is thus assumed, 
the aim of the university — to give it on 
the one side, on the other to receive it. 
The university, therefore, is doing its full 
duty in securing this aim. This purpose 
has its fullest finest embodiment in the 
universities of that country of great 
scholars, Germany. 

The second of the two movements 
affecting our colleges is the extreme of 
this intellectual tendency. This movement 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 73 

assumes that college men are, in the light 
of the law and also in the light of fact, 
infants ; that the college is a nursery ; 
and that the supervision of those of tender 
years and inexperienced is to be minute 
and constant. This movement shows its 
method and character by demanding that 
the lights in the rooms of students shall 
be put out at or before ten o*clock of 
each evening, and shall not be relighted 
before half-past five the next morning. It 
surrounds the daily conduct and belong- 
ings of the student with certain limita- 
tions ; it forbids his going to the railroad 
station ; it looks upon his departure from 
town as a moral transgression ; it pro- 
hibits smoking under penalties which 
would seem to signify that the smoke of 
the pipe is the smoke of the bottomless 
pit. 

These two extreme and antagonistic 
movements are acting with various de- 
grees of force in all our colleges. It re- 
quires no profundity or length of state- 



74 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

ment to show how unworthy each of these 
movements is. The German university is 
a model for the American college in many 
matters. It is a model in thoroughness 
of instruction, in completeness of equip- 
ment of a certain sort, and in the enthu- 
siasm of the teaching force ; but in certain 
other respects it is not a model. Chiefly 
it is not a model in respect to the free- 
dom from personal supervision. The Ger- 
man student is more mature than his 
American brother ; his work at the uni- 
versity is more akin to the work of the 
American professional student than it is 
to the work of the American college stu- 
dent. Furthermore, what I venture to call 
the laziness of the German student, and 
also certain immoral practices altogether 
too prevalent, are not proper objects of 
imitation for American students. It is 
known to every observer that it is not 
till toward the close of his course that 
the German student usually settles down 
to hard work. It is, further, not neces- 



COLLEGE GOVERiVMENT. 75 

sary to assume that this indolence is 
the inevitable result of the lack of super- 
vision ; but it may be said that a college, 
even if having regard to only intellec- 
tual aims and methods, must, in securing 
these aims, be concerned with moral con- 
duct and behavior. For we are learning 
that such is the integrity of each indi- 
vidual, such a unity is each man, that 
the abuse of any one of his parts 
leads to evil results in all parts. If the 
body is unduly stimulated or weakened, 
undue excitement or lassitude affects 
the mind. If the moral nature is injured, 
either through the cherishing of base 
ideals or the following of base methods 
or the adopting of base practices, the in- 
tellect suffers. Drunkenness is a crime 
against the laws of the intellect as well 
as a sin against ethical principles. Licen- 
tiousness is a sword which palsies the in- 
tellect as well as cuts the nerves of self- 
control. Therefore the American college, 
seeking intellectual results, seeking intel- 



76 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

lectual results only, must conserve moral 
standards. 

As to the second movement, concerned 
with the careful supervision of students, 
it is to be said that the American college 
is to free itself from giving a minute and 
constant watchfulness to its men. For the 
American college is not a nursery ; its 
students are not infants. Rules minute 
and inquisitive defeat themselves. They 
cannot be enforced ; and, even if they 
could be enforced, the enforcement would 
tend to do away with the fundamental 
purpose of a college, viz., to fit the stu- 
dent to be his own worthy master. For 
the purpose of the college is to guide the 
student, in the little world of the college 
itself, in such enlarging self-control that 
the translation from the college to the 
larger world will be attended with the 
least peril. 

Every college has its ** Rules and Regu- 
lations.'' It puts a statement of these 
rules and regulations into the hands of 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 77 

every student entering. These laws differ 
in different institutions. Of the excel- 
lences or defects of such statements it is 
not necessary to speak in detail ; but it 
may be said in general that all penalties 
for the violation of these rules should be 
based on the simple principle of natural- 
ness. All laws should be made, so far as 
possible, self-acting, self-enforcing. The 
fracture of any rule should carry w^ith it 
its own punishment. If a student break 
the law requiring attendance at reci- 
tation, the penalty should be simply the 
prohibition of his attendance. If the stu- 
dent violate the law of absence from 
town without permission, the punishment 
should be the prohibition of his remain- 
ing in the college tow^n. If the student 
is falling below the required standard in 
recitations, he should have no opportunity 
to recite. Such penalties of the natural, 
self-enforcing sort do we exact in social 
relations. If a man fail to behave as a 
gentleman, he soon has no opportunity 



78 WITHIX COLLEGE WALLS. 

SO to behave ; he is ostracised from the 
society of gentlemen. The college is a 
proper field for the application of a 
similar principle. 

But in the supervision of college men 
the principle and the method of super- 
vision are far more important than the 
rules and regulations, however wisely 
framed. The relation between officer and 
student should be made as personal and 
intimate as it can be made. It would 
be well to forget that one is a college 
superior and the other a college inferior. 
It would also be well for the student to 
be impressed with the truth — and it is a 
truth — that when he is discouraged he has 
no better friend than his professor, and 
that no one is better fitted to advise when 
he wishes counsel or to cheer when he is 
discouraged, as every student is at times 
prone to be. The student, I know, is in- 
clined to think that the teacher is always 
busy ; yet he should learn that no teacher 
is so busy but that he is happy to lay 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 79 

aside all tasks, however pressing, to have 
a talk with the student. The student is 
inclined to think that the professor does 
not care for him and probably ** looks 
down '' upon him. Ah ! he will, when he 
himself becomes a teacher, learn that 
there is no one whom the teacher so 
cares for as he cares for the student, and 
that his w^elfare is the constant object of 
his teacher's interest and solicitude. He 
is anxious not only to keep the student 
out of the bad, but also to aid him in 
securing the largest, noblest, and finest 
good. 

Tholuck did a great work for the world 
by his walks and talks with his students. 
American professors may do a great deal 
for the world by putting themselves on 
terms of intimacy with their students ; by 
sitting w^ith them before blazing hearth- 
stones till the hearthstones cease to blaze 
and the coals turn into ashes. 

Some colleges appoint of their profes- 
sors those w^ho are called '^advisers," to 



80 WITH IN COLLEGE WALLS, 

be the special counsellors of the students. 
The method is simple : each student is 
assigned to some one teacher upon whom 
he has a special right to make claims for 
counsel. The method is a good one ; 
but that method is a better one in which 
by certain processes of natural selection — 
not by arbitrary enactment — each student 
seeks out some professor and each pro- 
fessor seeks out students, and each be- 
comes to the other a friend. It is not 
on the part of the student a toadying, 
or on the part of the professor an un- 
dignified lapse ; it is on the part of each 
an act of noble gentlemanliness of giving 
and receiving help. Happy day that 
when in all our colleges such a relation 
of genuine helpfulness becomes the easily 
sitting custom ! Happy day that when all 
teachers, not forgetting that they are to 
teach the humanities, also remember with 
love the humanity of college men ! 

The two foci whence one may draw 
the whole ellipse of good college govern- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT, 8 1 

ment and relationships are respect and 
sympathy. To maintain a proper con- 
trol of students, college officers must 
have the respect of students. The secur- 
ing of this respect is promoted by the 
high intellectual character of the offi- 
cers. The scholarship of professors is 
to be profound, exact, noble ; their power 
to teach adequate, their general training 
sufficient. The nobler their scholarship 
and the more able their teaching, the 
greater is the respect they receive. If 
their scholarship be slovenly, superficial, 
narrow, or if their equipment be weak, 
a class soon discovers such omissions, and 
converts such omissions into causes for 
fomenting distrust and disrespect. If the 
professor of history often tell his students 
that he will look up and answer a ques- 
tion unexpectedly asked, or if the profes- 
sor of mathematics remark that he wants 
more time to think about a problem, the 
inference is swift that the professor of 
history does not know the authorities, nor 



82 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

the professor of mathematics his subject. 
For men who, in intellectual affairs, are 
not what they either seem to be or ought 
to be, students have contempt, and ought 
to have contempt. But for men who are 
great, for men who, if not great, have 
yet proper scholarly fitness for their work, 
students have respect, and only respect. 
The counsel given by such men is heeded, 
their wishes regarded, their commands 
obeyed. 

Respect on the part of students for 
college officers is promoted also through 
a high moral character in these officers. 
I emphasize the word high. Of course 
the college officer is moral, but there are 
degrees in the degree of even professorial 
morality. The soul of the teacher should 
be w^hite. The atmosphere of his char- 
acter should be hoh;, and yet without 
cant or pietism. His conduct should be 
based on principles rather than on rules. 
He should be pure and clean as are the 
angels, yet he should not give the im- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 83 

pression of gaining such purity through 
disembodying himself. He should not 
furnish reason for the belief that he is 
able to be an angel only through re- 
moving himself from the possibilities of 
such temptations as mortals are subject 
to. He should give the impression that 
he is a man ; that he has conquered him- 
self, and so has conquered the world. 
For a man of this character the student 
has respect, and only respect ; but for the 
man who has a high moral character 
only because he has no stomach and no 
liver and no blood, the student has no 
great regard. Of course he cannot have 
any regard at all for the man w^ho yields 
to the temptations of the w^orld, the flesh, 
and the devil. In this high moral char- 
acter which is necessary in the college 
officer the element of justice has pri- 
mar)^ value. Students are keenly sensitive 
to justice, as also, of course, by parity 
of reasoning, to injustice. They know 
the college rules, and their scent of any 



84 U'lmiX COLLEGE trALLS. 



wrong in any one of them is as keen as 
the scent of the hound ; and also their 
alertness to detect any injustice in the 
application of these rules is as great as 
the alertness of the loon to the flash of 
the rifle. College boys can hardly pay a 
higher compliment to a college officer 
than by saying, '' Professor A B is 
always square." College boys do not ob- 
ject to being dealt v.ith severeh', but 

they do object to being dealt with at all 
unjustly, even if the dealing be not 
severe. 

Through the maintenance in the officer 
of a liujuanly Christian character is re- 
spect secured. Every college officer 
should be a Christian. He should love 
his God supremely. He should embody 
a noble Christian type, but this type 
should not be mystical. It should not be 
ghostly, hovrever spiritual it may be. It 
should' not be so other-worldly as to seem 
remote from this world. The officer 
should have a hold on things divine, but 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 85 

he should not forget that, if his head is 
in the air, his feet still plod on the earth. 
College men are very much in the world, 
and they have small respect for the pro- 
fessor whose face and manners seem to be 
constantly and affectedly angelic, saying, 

"I want to be an angel, and with the angels stand." 

College men know it is more important 
for good folks to stay in this world of 
Satan and of Satan's imps than to [stand 
and sing with the angelic choruses. For 
the man who is vigorous in Christian 
aggressiveness, whose type of the Christian 
character is of the wisely polemic sort, col- 
lege men have the most profound respect. 
The securing of this respect is promoted 
through the sense of gentlemanliness in 
the conduct and bearing of college offi- 
cers. Students despise all eccentricities of 
dress on the part of their college super- 
iors, whether arising from foppishness 
or from carelessness. All unfitting per- 
sonal habits, too, are especially con- 



86 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

temned. Every act of boorishness is held 
up for scorn. Avariciousness, in partic- 
ular, vacates any respect which the stu- 
dent may have for his teacher. If the 
early surroundings and training of the 
college officer have been unfortunate, and 
if scholarly conditions have not removed 
the evidence of such unfortunate environ- 
ment, a sense of pity may go from the 
heart of the student toward one in whom 
he expects to find every excellence ; but 
this sense of pity is usually accompanied 
by a sense of contempt. The sentiment 
is, "" He ought to behave and to seem as 
a gentleman.'* 

When college officers embody these 
four elements — a high intellectual char- 
acter, a high moral character, a humanly 
Christian character, and a noble gentle- 
manliness — the government in the college 
becomes a comparatively easy matter. 
These qualities act at once as an inspira- 
tion toward noble c .nduct in students 
and also as a repres.lon toward evil con- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 8/ 

duct and the formation of evil character. 
Yet when respect and respect only is 

secured, the ideal of college government 
is not gained ; for respect does not nec- 
essarily imply that intimacy of relation- 
ship between the officer and the scholar 
which it is well to form. It can hardly 
be too often reiterated that the greatest 
possible intimacy is to be promoted be- 
tween the student and the officer. Such 
intimacy should be of the greatest ad- 
vantage to the student, and the professor 
should be prevented from enjoying it 
only by reason of what he regards as 
greater duties ; yet duties that are more 
important than that duty of standing on 
intimate terms w^ith the student it would 
be hard to find. 

Therefore to the element of respect in 
the government of college students should 
be added the element of sympathy. The 
officer and the student should be on 
terms of cordial sympathy. 

The relation of cordial sympathy is 



88 IVITHIX COLLEGE WALLS. 

promoted through a proper appreciation 
on the part of the officer of the magni- 
tude of the tasks which he assigns to 
students. These tasks should be severe. 
The student comes to college to work, 
and the severer his work, within certain 
limits, of the greater value to him is the 
work itself. Yet the professor may as- 
sign too much work even to the best 
man. Such assignments tend to dis- 
courage the faithful student and to 
promote a sort of mental despair 
and possibly mental disintegration. The 
class comes to feel that the pro- 
fessor is trying, not to guide the stu- 
dents, as he ought, but to drive them, 
and even to drive them upon a gallop. 
Such an endeavor on his part usually 
results in arousing the mulish element in 
the students, — and they'^refuse to go. The 
result is a remoteness or a divorce in the 
relation of the class and the teacher. But 
if the teacher appreciate the powers of 
the class, giving the impression that ne 



COLLEGE GOVERNMEXT, 89 



wishes each member to spend a proper 
amount of time upon each lesson, and no 
more, the class is inclined to work for 
him v\ ith all the power that each member 
may have. The student comes to feel 
that the teacher appreciates the mental 
state and the conditions of the student, 
and in this resulting sympathy he be- 
comes obedient to the will of his intel- 
lectual superior and supervisor. 

Sympathy is promoted, too, through in- 
tellectual intimacies between the student 
and the professor. It is a happy condition 
in the American college life that such inti- 
macies are becoming more numerous and 
also more intimate. What is known as 
** seminary work" tends to promote such 
closeness of relationship. In this work 
the professor ceases to be a professor 
and becomes a student, working with his 
students. These students are usually 
fewer than are found in the ordinary col- 
lege class, and such fewness of numbers 
tends to promote personal and scholarly 



90 WITHIN COILEGE WALLS. 

intimacies. To the will of a teacher with 
whom a student is thus working, the stu- 
dent will naturally refuse to be diso- 
bedient. He comes to see that the col- 
lege does not consist of rules or regula- 
tions, but of beings who are thoroughly 
human and a good deal like himself. 
He soon learns that every professor is 
quite as much a student as a professor. 
Intellectual intimacies promote personal 
sympathy, and personal sympathy pro- 
motes good government. 

Such sympathy is further fostered 
through intimate personal associations. 
Intimate personal associations find at once 
a cause and a result in the long talks 
of professors and students. Such talks, 
if I may be allowed to make a personal 
confession, I like to have with students 
in whom I have a personal interest, or 
whom I wish to have a personal interest 
in me. If they feel that they get some- 
thing from such talks, I surely feel that 
I get much more than I can give to 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 9I 

IS 

them. I thus come to know students: to 
know their strengths and their weak- 
nesses ; their aims and their methods ; 
their environment and their principles ; 
and I myself come to feel a deeper sym- 
pathy with them, and they also, I hope, 
come to see the desire on the part of the 
college for offering the very best oppor- 
tunities for Christian, intellectual, ethical 
culture. They cannot fail under favor- 
able conditions to be impressed with the 
desire on the part of every college officer 
to do the very most and the very best 
for each student. If action is taken by 
a Faculty or by a president which seems 
to them unw^ise, these intimacies of per- 
sonal relationship help to provide good 
ground to prove to them the justice of 
such action. This intimacy tends toward 
the promotion of a particular advantage : 
college officers are thus able to come 
into the lives of students at the time 
of crises. The officers usually labor 
under the disadvantage of not knowing 



92 WnillN COLLEGE WALLS, 

when ethical or intellectual crises are oc- 
curring. But if they can know when 
men stand at the parting of the ways or 
in the stress of the storm, and if they 
may come closely into these lives, it is 
well for the student, it is well for the 
professor, it is well for the college. 

Certain college officers have had the 
noble enjoyment of commanding the re- 
spect of students, and also of being in 
the relation of sympathy with them. No 
one has excelled Mark Hopkins in thus 
having the respect of his students, and also 
in being in sj-mpathy with their minds 
and hearts. To college officers there 
is hardly a more interesting chapter in 
President Carter's life of Mark Hopkins 
than the chapter entitled *'The Rebellion 
of 1868." This rebellion is among the 
most remarkable of all college rebellions. 
The whole body of students stood upon 
one side and the whole Faculty stood 
upon the other. The Faculty w^as, on 
the whole, right, as faculties usually are. 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 93 

At the time, however, of the outbreak, 
President Hopkins was away from Will- 
iamstown. On his return and learning 
the condition, he so bore himself and so 
explained the condition of affairs that he 
commanded at once the respect and the 
sympathy of the students. He did not 
break down any college rule. He main- 
tained the majesty of college law, but, 
while doing this, he so showed himself as 
feeling with the students in their mis- 
apprehensions, and also as so eager to 
make every adjustment that wisdom could 
dictate, that the rebels presently returned 
to their w^ork. Few, if any, college presi- 
dents have certain conspicuous abilities 
which Mark Hopkins possessed, but these 
two elements of respect and sympathy 
should play the most important part in 
the government of every American college. 



94 WITHIN COILEGE IVALIS. 



VI. 



PLAY IN COLLEGE. 



'* I HAVE a son at Yale College at an 
annual expense of nearly $2000," says a 
New York father in beginning a letter to 
the Evening Post. He fears that the as- 
sociations of his boy are so unscholarly 
and trivial, that he will be obliged to 
say at the close of his course with a 
slight change of the Scripture (Exodus 
32, 24), '' Behold, we have thrown gold 
into the fire, and there has come out this 
calf." The reports as to the training of 
the ^^ crew " and of the ^^ nine," as to the 
** boom in chess-playing," the ^' promen- 
ade by the Junior class," the *^ concert 
by the Glee Club," and '' germans by 
the three upper classes," incline him to 
the belief that Yale College is a school of 



PLA V IN COLLEGE. 9$ 

professional athletes, singers, and dancers. 
He is filled at once with wonder and 
madness. And it is true, and most un- 
fortunately true, that to the public eye 
the colleges appear primarily to be re- 
duced to a '^ crew," a ''nine,'' and a 
^' foot-ball team/' The usual reports, ex- 
clusive of Commencement season, that 
are made in the new^spapers relate to 
contests of every sort, excepting intel- 
lectual. The reason is evident : the public 
which reads the papers is more inter- 
ested in the exhibition of the muscles 
than of the minds of college men, and 
the papers collect the news in which 
their constituency is interested. 

But, notwithstanding all the evidences 
to the contrary, it is true that our 
colleges are institutions of the higher 
scholarship, designed to train, and training, 
young men in habits of clear, prolonged, 
and profound thinking. Despite all diver- 
sions and distractions, I believe there 
has not been for a generation a year 



g6 WITHJX COLLEGE WALLS. 

when students were working their brains 
more constantly, more wisely, or more 
effectively than in this year of grace. 
The testimony of professors and of presi- 
dents, as I am privileged to hear it, is 
quite unanimous that the intellectual and 
moral earnestness of students is increas- 
ing. Professor George H. Palmer has 
pointed out that in the decade be- 
ginning in 1874-75 the scholastic grade 
of students at Harvard rose several de- 
grees. In the Senior class of 1874-75 
the average man had a mark of 67;^ ; in 
the Senior class of 1883-84 the average 
man had a mark of 81^." The three 
lower classes indicate a gain, though less 
than in the case of the Senior. The 
better students in the later years of the 
Germ.an university work perhaps as hard 
as the better students in our own col- 
leges ; but it is to be rcniembered that 
the average age of admission to the 

* The Andover Revieu\ article '* The New Educa- 
tion," vol. 4, p. 400. 



PLA V IN COLLEGE. 07 



German university is two years ahead of 
the average age of admission to the 
American college. But our own men 
work more hours and are harder 
*^ readers'* than English university men. 
Not a few students average for the four 
years sixty hours of work a week. The 
majority devote at least seven hours a 
day to their courses of instruction. Six 
hours a day of study represent less than 
the average. But at Oxford an average 
of seven hours is high ; and it is said that 
by six hours' work each day, together 
with a proper use of vacation, a man 
can do himself justice in any study. 
Idlers are to be found in every college 
as in every factory and shop, who will 
get along with just as little labor as 
possible ; and in the case of some col- 
leges the labor necessary for receiving 
the first degree may be made very small. 
But poor scholarship, which once would 
have been regarded with indifference, is 
now despised, and the m.an who '' tails " 



98 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

the class, even though he be the crack 
oarsman or the best ''rusher," is the 
object of either pity or ridicule. 

Nor is this increase limited to the 
amount of work. The quality likewise 
indicates improvement. Intellectual inde- 
pendence is at once a characteristic and 
a result of the present methods of study 
in our colleges. The laboratory system 
is adopted in every field of study to 
which it is applicable. The student of 
history, of the classics, goes back to the 
sources of history, as the student of 
chemistry or of physics is brought into 
direct relation with the elements which 
he is to manipulate. The student be- 
comes an investigator ; he learns how to 
use books, to weigh evidence, and to 
judge of proportion. The student be- 
comes a thinker ; he is taught to com- 
pare, to discriminate ; he comes to know 
that the reason for an opinion is more 
important than the opinion itself. 

The high quality and large amount of 



PLA V IiV COLLEGE. 99 

work now done in the college are de- 
preciated, it seems to me, by that sys- 
tem which puts a far larger premium 
upon success in periodical examinations 
than upon daily work. This system has 
strong support ; but to determine rank 
for a year's work by the manner in 
which one passes two examinations of 
three hours each is to influence the 
ordinary student to make the semi-annual 
*' crams " take the place of daily learning 
and reflection. I notice that the lights 
in the windows of certain dormitories 
are fourfold more numerous at the time 
of the mid-year and annual examinations 
than at other periods. 

But despite all this the college of this 
day is distinguished in public opinion 
more by its play and sport than by its 
intellectual service. The popular play 
and sport lie along the line of athletic 
exercise. Every large college, and many 
a small one, has not only its crews and 
ball nines, but also foot-ball elevens, la- 



ICO VVITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

crosse and cricket teams, bicycle clubs, 
shooting clubs, tennii clubs, and I know 
not how many other athletic associations. 
At the basis of all discussion as to the 
worth or worthlessness of these sports 
lie several propositions upon which all 
agree. It is universally acknoXvledged 
that the body should be kept vigorous, 
and that proper exercise is a means to 
the attaining and retaining of this desired 
vigor. It is also confessed by all that 
athletic sports are not an aim of a col- 
lege training, and that therefore they 
should be considered rather as the amuse- 
ments of amateurs than as the labors of 
professional experts engaged in earning 
either bread or a reputation. It is 
further generally granted that these sports 
prove to be a guard against certain vices 
to which young men are especially 
tempted. There is also no lack of agree- 
ment upon the proposition that these 
sports tempt many engaging in them to 
excessive indulgence ; an indulgence which 



PLAY IN COLLEGE. 10 1 

it is the duty of both student and officer 
to restrain. The question is chiefly a 
question of proportion. 

Chief among the objections urged 
against the system of athletic sports is 
its effect upon the scholarship of the 
athletes. The time and strength which 
boating and ball men devote to these 
avocations on field and river are regard- 
ed as lost to their proper vocations. 
The charge has a basis in truth. But it 
is to be said, also, that many men of 
this sort would not in any instance give 
that time and vigor, now, given to the 
sport, to study. They w^ould spend their 
strength in amusements and diversions of 
a positively harmful tendency. It is, 
furthermore, net true that the brilliant 
players on the field, or the swiftest 
oarsmen, are the dullest dunces in the 
class-room. President Eliot states that, 
in the college of which he is the able 
and distinguished administrator, *' of the 
eighty-four different students who were 



102 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

members of the University crew, base- 
ball nine, or foot-ball eleven from 1873 
to 1881, more than a quarter stood above 
the middle of their respective classes, and 
the average standing of the whole num- 
ber w^as represented by seventy-two in 
a supposed class of one hundred. It may 
be said, moreover, for some of the very 
lowest scholars among the athletes, that 
the perseverance, resolution, and self-denial 
necessary to success in athletic sports 
turn out to be qualities valuable in busi- 
ness and other active occupations of after- 
life, even when they are associated with 
lack of interest in scholarly pursuits, or 
with dulness or slowness of mind/* ^ 

The cost in money as well as the cost 
in time and strength constitutes an ob- 
jection to the system. The pecuniary 
expense, however, is not so large as is 
often represented. The athlete may make 
his training and his exhibition of physical 

* Annual Reports of the President, etc., 1881-82, 
pp. 18-19. 



PLAY IN COLLEGE. IO3 

powers either costly or cheap, as he sees 
fit. As a fact, his expenses are usually 
paid for him by the subscriptions of fel- 
low-students. He is looked upon as their 
representative, and they pay bills for his 
uniform, travelling, etc. The annual ex- 
pense of the Harvard University Boat 
Club, of a recent year of which the 
treasurer's report lies before me, is about 
$6000. Of this sum, $3300 was derived 
from members of the four college classes. 
The number of subscribers represented 
only about two fifths of the whole body 
of students ; and the average amount 
paid by each subscriber was $13.75 in 
the Senior class, $10.09 ^^ ^^"^^ Junior, 
$9.77 in the Sophomore, and $7.83 in the 
Freshman. The names of three fifths of 
all the students are not to be found on 
the list. In the case of Harvard the cost 
of sending a crew to New London or 
elsewhere, and of supporting aquatic 
sports, is certainly light for each student. 
In the case of a college of fewer students 



104 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

and less wealthy, the cost is relatively 
much heavier ; but the expenses of the 
crew may be made less, and in no in- 
stance need necessary expense be felt as 
a burden. In 1888 at Harvard the aver- 
age amount given by each student to 
the support of athletics was $15.41. One 
quarter of the students gave nothing.^ 
The students should not, and usually 
would not, lose caste or respect or 
position of any sort through poverty and 
consequent inability to add to the boat- 
ing funds. 

The fact is that most men in Yale 
College who spend nearly $2000 each 
year are spending about one half of this 
large allowance in ways less creditable 
than subscriptions to the boat club. The 
** ordinary annual expenses " at Yale are, 
at their extremes, set down in a recent 
catalogue as $350 and $1025, including 
instruction : room-rent, $140 to $250 ; 



* Harvard College Report upon Athletics, 1888, p. 48. 



PLA V IN COLLEGE. I05 

board, $135 to $288; fuel, lights, and 
washing, etc., $30 to $70. Certain of these 
items seem to me altogether too low ; 
yet that, beyond and above $1000, a 
student should spend another $1000, is 
certainly extravagance and waste, and 
may indicate evil indulgence. It is true 
that drunkenness is not so prevalent as 
formerly ; but it is also true, as indicated 
by the clearest evidence offered by the 
students themselves, that lust is very 
common. In hundreds of ways, credita- 
ble or discreditable, honorable or shame- 
ful, students of large income fritter or 
squander their fathers* money. The col- 
lege authorities would be glad to stop 
reckless expenditure ; most fathers would 
be glad to put an end to it ; the stu- 
dent who spends and the one who re- 
ceives the money are interested in con- 
tinuing it. But a persistent effort should 
be made to reduce the cost of an education 
to as small a sum as is consistent with 
the best use of the advantages which a 



I06 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

college offers. Thousands of boys are 
kept from college by the belief that a 
college education is far more costly than 
it need to be. 

It is not to be doubted that certain 
features of athletic sports are demoral- 
izing to manners and debasing to morals. 
The betting and the gambling which are 
fastened upon the result of these contests 
are corrupting, and only corrupting. The 
association of college oarsmen or ball 
men with professional players is not a 
benefit to the college men. The spectacle 
which may be seen at the intercollegiate 
boat-races and ball-games does not tend 
to impress beholders with the proper 
purpose or worth of undergraduate cul- 
ture. These things, and many others, are 
bad, thoroughly bad. It is not possible, 
or, if possible, not wise, under present 
conditions, to interdict the annual boat- 
races ; but if they could be stopped, the 
chief losers would be the hotel-keepers 
at the lake or bay where they are pulled. 



PLA Y IN COLLEGE. 10/ 

Nor do I believe that this cessation of 
pubHc intercollegiate contests would seri- 
ously diminish the participation of the 
large number of students in the exercise 
of rowing. In the case of rowing, and 
of sport of every kind, it Avere well for 
the contestants to be limited to students 
of their own college. The peripatetic 
base-ball nine of a college, playing games 
with nines from other colleges of several 
States, wins no permanent glory for its 
members or their abna mater. It may 
not now be wise to stop at once the 
series of games which the representatives 
of many colleges play each June ; but 
would it not be well to put a narrower 
limit upon the number of colleges to be 
represented, and to take measures for 
placing the arrangements more entirely in 
the hands of the college authorities ? 
The narrowing of the circle of athletic 
rivalry would not seriously, if at all, 
lessen the athletic enthusiasm of the ma- 
jority of students. So far as possible, 



I08 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

'' field-days " should be limited to the 
men of one college. The smallest college 
has students enough to awaken the ex- 
citement of competition. *^ Field-days," 
moreover, to be of the greatest worth, 
should be placed under the wise juris- 
diction of college officers, and the con- 
tests should be worthy to receive the 
hearty approbation of professor and trustee. 
Athletics have several direct considera- 
tions in their favor above exercise in 
the gymnasium. They are usually con- 
ducted in the open air, and exercise in 
the open ^air is far more conducive to 
health and vigor than exercise taken in 
the best-ventilated gymnasium. They 
are, further, of a more voluntary char- 
acter than gymnastic practice : they 
spring from arrangements and endeavo: 
made by the students themselves. Their 
rewards are rewards either in popularity 
or in ^' silver cups '* given by the students 
or others. They are, therefore, more at- 
tractive and more heartily enjoyed. They 



PLA V IN COLLEGE. I09 

are, therefore, also of greater benefit to 
those participating. 

The athletic system in some form has 
come into the college to stay. For 
better or for worse, the college must 
keep it, and by the discreet guidance of 
the authorities it may be made of great 
and lasting worth. Its sports lend them- 
selves easily to differences of opinion 
between students and Faculty. Students 
should always recognize that these sports 
are not only of secondary but of tertiary 
importance, and that the college govern- 
ment has the right, nay, is obliged by 
duty, to use every measure to cut off 
excessive indulgence. It is also clear that 
the ofificial boards should grant to students 
every right, every material advantage, which 
tends to develop, directly or indirectly, 
manly character. Committees from the 
students and from the Faculty, of per- 
manent standing, have in several colleges 
so managed these difficult questions as 
at once to give pleasure and to maintain 



no WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

self-respect. It is known that the ideal 
college man of to-day is not, as was his 
brother of a generation ago, pale, sallow, 
hollow-chested, bow-legged, and blear-eyed, 
but robust, muscular, vigorous in bodily 
faculty and functions. The gymnasium is 
a potent instrument in effecting the im- 
provement. College athletics should carry 
forward this work to its perfection. 

Of all the sports of college men, foot- 
ball is the most popular. It illustrates 
the bad side and the good of college 
athletics. 

Foot-ball has its bad side. It breaks 
collar-bones, gouges out eyes, sprains 
ankles. It absorbs too much attention 
from certain students. But foot-ball also 
has its good side. It has intellectual rela- 
tions and moral. Its playing demands 
mind as well as muscle, white tissue of 
the brain as well as red tissue of the 
chest. Foot-ball trains in a conspicuous 
way certain precious elements of char- 
acter. 



PLA V IN COLLEGE, 1 1 I 

Foot-ball trains that supreme quality, 
judgment. The game is one of inferences. 
It teaches the art of weighing evidence. 
It is a constant and swift grasping to- 
gether of many and diverse parts, and 
from this one conception drawing a 
certain duty to be swiftly done. It is a 
comparison — comparing strength with op- 
posing strength. It is a ceaseless inter- 
rogation — what will the opponent do, how 
can he be beaten, where is his weak 
point, where his strong? Judgments 
made in foot-ball are made under the 
necessity of swiftness like the lightning's. 
The mind is alert to see, to infer. A 
second determines priority. No tiger 
springs m.ore quickly on his victim than 
a foot-ball man ''tackles.'* Fumbling is 
death. 

" If it were done . . . then \ well 
It were done quickly." 

If it is not done quickly by one side, 
it is done quickly by the other. The 



tI2 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

quicker quickness triumphs, the wiser wis- 
dom wins. 

Foot-ball is training in co-operative en- 
deavor. Each player works with every 
other, knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder. 
One man runs, three men protect him 
from the tackling assaults of his antago- 
nists. One man gets the ball by a trick, 
four men have aided him. Nine men are 
pushing nine other men toward a goal, 
bowed and buckled together into one 
manhood ; two men stand without, ready 
for a swiftly made emergency. Each man 
is strong in himself, each man is strong 
for himself and for every other. Let our 
friends who are talking of a co-operative 
basis of society see a foot-ball game if 
they wish to know w^hat real co-opera- 
tion is. Eleven minds that think as one, 
eleven hearts that throb as one, eleven 
necks that bend as one, twenty-two 
shoulders that push as one, twenty-two 
hands, twenty-two knees, every man, 
every faculty of every man, all working 



PLAY IN COLLEGE, 1 13 

with each other and toward one aim — 
that's foot-ball. 

Foot-ball is a discipline in the qualities 
of judgment and co-operation. It is a 
discipline in many other and excellent 
qualities ; but let it suffice to say that 
foot-ball is a discipline. It is a training ; 
it is a conversion of adipose matter, ma- 
terial, mental, into articulated forces. It 
promotes development ; it promotes self- 
control, self-restraint ; it promotes endur- 
ance ; it promotes proper obedience. The 
discipline of the regular United States 
Army is an education which, if not lib- 
eral, is liberating. The years spent at 
West Point, even if one shirks his books, 
would be a training from boyhood to 
manhood. The rigor and vigor of foot- 
ball have a similar effect. 

But I do not intend to eulogize foot- 
ball. I only w^ant to point out certain 
mental qualities which it, as one part of 
college play, fosters. Athletics occupy an 
important place in American life ; they oc- 



tI4 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

cupy an important place in college life. 
We can " down " them on neither the 
popular nor the academic field. Their 
evil features, and evil features they have, 
are to be eliminated. These sports are 
to exist — to exist in larger ways, too, as 
wealth becomes larger, work more ex- 
hausting, and life more complex. To 
abolish them is impossible. To guide 
them is the duty of those who are set to 
control things. To get the most out of 
them, to cause them to minister to the 
body, to minister to the mind, to 
minister to the soul, in ever-increasing 
worth, is to be made the great en- 
deavor. Foot-ball is to be made a game 
less for the foot than for the brain ; it is 
to be made to minister more to the mind 
than to the muscles. 



SIMPLICITY OF LIFE IN COLLEGE. 11$ 



VII. 

SIMPLICITY AND ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 

IN COLLEGE. 

The fear is often expressed that col- 
lege life is losing its simplicity. College 
life may have a simplicity of various and 
diverse sorts — material, intellectual, social ; 
but the loss or the lack of material sim- 
plicity is more apparent and impressive. 

It is said that living is ceasing to be 
plain and becoming high, that thinking is 
ceasing to be high and becoming plain. 
No evidence of the suggestion is more 
striking than that furnished in the pro- 
posal to build for one of our colleges a 
dormitory at a cost of about half a mill- 
ion dollars. If this immense sum were 
given for the endowment of research or 
to erect a gallery of art, the evidence 



Il6 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



would not be at all conclusive. But this 
large sum is «;iv^en to build a home for 
college men ; and a home for two hun- 
dred college men which costs five hun- 
dred thousand dollars is an indication of 
something other than simplicity in college 
life. Such an expenditure represents an 
elaborateness of furnishing, of personal 
and social luxury, quite unlike the life 
suggested by the old dormitory which, it 
is said, will be torn away to make room 
for this palatial home for students. I do 
not say that such a structure is proof of 
the lack of simplicity, but I do say it is 
evidence. The halls and houses of the 
fraternities which are found in many col- 
leges are further evidence that college 
life is becoming elaborate. These houses 
are, in their exterior impressiveness and in 
their interior furnishing, somewhat re- 
moved from an environment of the sort 
which the sons and grandsons of the 
founders of ' certain of these colleges en- 
joyed. With a few singular exceptions 



SIMPLICITY OF LIFE IN COLLEGE, l\^ 



the Structures built by colleges for 
scholarly purposes are solid, permanent, 
severe, economical ; but fraternity houses 
and memorial dormitories are in peril of 
taking on an unfitting elaborateness. 

I am no pessimist. I am a thorough 
optimist as respects the present and the 
future of the American College and of 
the college man ; but I am inclined to 
think that the marble and the granite 
offer significant intimations that college 
life is losing a certain simplicity. I also 
seriously fear that the lives of the stu- 
dents themselves furnish evidence for a 
similar conclusion. Does not many a stu- 
dent in certain colleges pay a larger 
annual rental for his suite of rooms than 
his father spent for all purposes in his 
college course of four years ? Does not 
the whole system of athletic sports sug- 
gest large expenditure and elaborateness 
of arrangement and condition ? Does not 
the life which many of the fellows live 
in the fraternity houses, many of these 



Il8 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

houses are mainly dormitories, indicate 
relations as manifold and as luxurious as 
the houses themselves are rich ? What 
are we to think of the simplicity of the 
life of college students some of whom 
spend fifty dollars apiece for a fraternity 
pin ? Does any one now believe that the 
*^ Hasty Pudding Club " at Harvard is 
content to dine upon porridge? 

The student does not stand alone. He 
is a part of this age of ours. The age it- 
self is an age of elaborate living. There- 
fore the living of the student is prone to 
be elaborate. It is hardly fitting to take 
boys from homes in which living is elabo- 
rate and to send them to colleges in 
which living is of extreme simplicity, it 
may be said. For better or for worse, it 
may be affirmed, the college is to be like 
the community. 

Yet I am sure that every college offi- 
cer and every parent look upon this peril 
of the loss of simplicity in college life 
with a very deep sense of regret. The 



SIMPLICITY OF LIFE IN COLLEGE. II9 



movement intimates that the idols of the 
market are driving out the idols of the 
temple of learning, that the idols of the 
parlor are expelling the idols of the 
library. It is well for the college to be 
democratic. Democracy means the rule, 
not of the higher or the highest people 
measured by social or financial standards, 
but of the great body of true and 
noble men and women. It is well for 
the high-born to live four years under 
conditions where dignity of birth shall 
not appear. It is well for the low-born 
to live four years- under conditions where 
lowliness of origin need not depress the 
spirit. It is well for the boy of promised 
large inheritance to sit by the side of the 
boy whose only capital is his brain and 
heart. It is well for the boy who has 
only himself to sit by the side of the boy 
who has much besides himself. If we are 
not to maintain democratic ideals and to 
sustain democratic methods in the college, 
where on this globe are we to maintain 



120 WITFIIX COLLEGE WALLS. 

and to sustain them? The cardinal virtues 
here should have their full swing. Men 
are here to be judged by the standards 
of the Ten Commandments and of the 
Beatitudes. The qualities of firmness, 
patience, caution, energy, judgment, sin- 
cerity, honesty, are here to elevate, and 
the qualities of rashness, tardiness, lazi- 
ness, falseness, are here to depress. Here 
every tub is to stand on its own bottom, 
whether the hoops of circumstances that 
hold the parts of each tub together are 
iron or silver or gold. Men are here to 
be as individual and independent as they 
are to be when they stand at the judg- 
ment-bar of God. Eternal \'erities are 
the college standards. If all college boys 
are to be in character as men, all college 
men are to be in their relation to each 
other as boys. Not, who is his grand- 
father.^ but, what can he do? Not, how 
much is his father worth ? but, what does 
he know? Not, what happiness of con- 
dition will be his ? but, what is he ? These 



SIMPLICITY OF LIFE IX COLLEGE. 121 

are the college tests. Brain is the only 
symbol of aristocracy and the examina- 
tion-room the only field of honor ; the in- 
tellectual, ethical, spiritual powers the 
only tests of merit ; a mighty individuality 
the only demand made of each, and a 
noble enlargement of a noble personality 
the only ideal. Such, I take it, is to 
be the simplicity of college life. 

The peril in thus making college life 
simple is that it will become bare and 
barren. I know a college in which this 
peril does prevail. The life is indeed sim- 
ple. I believe that sixty dollars a year, 
plus three and a half hours of labor each 
day, meets all annual charges. The rooms 
in the dormitory of this college which I 
visited were furnished as are furnished 
the rooms of an overseer in a logging 
camp in Northern Maine. The bill of 
fare was exceedingly plain. It is yet a 
college giving an education to many a 
boy who would otherwise be without it. 
It deserves honor and beneficence, I do 



122 WITHIN' COLLEGE WALLS. 

not doubt that in many respects it pro- 
vides a good education ; but the hfe 
seemed to me very bare and barren. I 
hesitate to imagine what Matthew Arnold 
would have said of it ; but let us be 
thankful that Matthew Arnold is not the 
lasting arbiter in college questions. 

The fact is that the simplicity of the 
college is to be a simplicity which shall 
lead to enrichment. The chief compre- 
hensive difference between the impression 
which Oxford and Cambridge make on 
the student, and that which the new Amer- 
ican college makes, is indicated, I think, 
in this word, enrichment. Life in an Eng- 
lish university may be no more elaborate 
than the life in the New World ; but it 
has a richness which the college in the 
New World has not. It is as hard to dis- 
tinguish in words what this difference is 
as it is easy to feel the difference in spirit. 
It is the difference between wine tw^o 
years old and wine twenty years old ; it 
is the difference between the russet 



SIMPLICITY OF LIFE LV COLLEGE. 1 23 



apple in January and the same apple in 
April ; it is the difference between the 
vigorous thinking of a young man and the 
thinking of the same man become old. 
So far as it is able, the American college 
is to give this enrichment to each student. 
Each student is to have the mind well 
stored, but the wealth he accumulates is 
not to be a mere mass ; it is to be prop- 
erly divided and assessed. He is to have 
a proper regard for each of the virtues 
and a fitting respect for the graces ; but 
the content of each virtue is to be large 
and the significance of each of the graces 
is to be to him mighty. He is to make 
himself as a Greek statue, simple, severe, 
correct, but whose lines suggest infinite 
beauty and whose face is an intimation of 
divine truth and love. The life of the 
college man is thus to be a life at once 
rich and simple. 

I know^ very well that simplicity of 
heart, of mind, of character, is perfectly 
consistent with elaborateness and luxury 



124 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

in circumstance and condition. I know 
very well that many a college man who 
has all the gifts of fortune may in his 
heart of hearts be as simple as the child 
of poverty. As things of the mind are 
more precious than things of matter, so 
simplicity in things of the mind is of far 
larger worth than simplicity in things 
material. But it is not to be forgotten 
that the temptation offered by elaborate- 
ness in living is toward the lessening of 
simplicity in spirit. " It is easier for a 
camel to go through the eye of a 
needle " than for a man whose conditions 
are elaborate and whose circumstances 
are luxurious to live in his soul a life of 
severe simplicity ; but this can be done. 
Rich men, and many of them, do enter 
the kingdom of heaven, we have reason 
to believe ; and it can be believed that 
students of elaborate and luxurious con- 
dition may be in heart and mind simple. 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH, 125 



VIII. 

THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH. 

Education and Christianity are sisters. 
The discipHne of the intellectual char- 
acter is intimately associated with the 
discipline of the moral character. The 
school-house and the church have stood 
side by side. Clergymen have founded the 
college, and the college in turn has trained 
the clergymen. The early history of the 
higher education in the United States 
is largely a history of the work of the 
ministry. With the exception of State 
universities, the colleges of the country 
have usually been founded either by 
ministers or for ministers. The oldest 
college bears the name of a non-conform- 
ing clergyman, who gave to it his library 
and one half of his property. Founded 



126 WITHIX COLLEGE WALLS. 

in a colony where church-members alone 
were voters, it was thoroughly ecclesiasti- 
cal. The second college founded in Am- 
erica was William and Mary of Virginia. 
A religious and clerical purpose prevailed 
in its establishment, as in the establish- 
ment of Harvard in the Bay Colony. In 
the enactment of the Virginia Assembly 
regarding the foundation of William and 
Mary, four purposes were named : to pro- 
mote learning and the education of youth, 
the supply of ministers, and to advance 
piety."^ The college authorities in Virginia 
w^ere quite as pious in their purpose as 
the royal authorities in England were pro- 
fane. When the Rev. Dr. James Blair 
went to Attorney-General Seymour with 
the royal note to prepare the charter, he 
was met by remonstrances against the ex- 
pensive liberality. Seymour said he saw 
no occasion for a college in America. 
Dr. Blair replied that more ministers were 



^ Assembly's Enactment, 23 March, 1660. 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH. 12/ 

needed in Virginia, that the people had 
souls, and that the college was necessary 
to educate ministers. ^* Souls ! " remon- 
strated Seymour,. *^ damn their souls ! Let 
them make tobacco/*^ The third college 
founded in this country, Yale, was found- 
ed by a few ministers assembled in Bran- 
ford, who established it by the formality 
of presenting a number of books with 
these words : '' I give these books for 
the founding of a college. "f 

The clerical beginning of the higher 
education thus made has continued. The 
Presbyterian influence was felt in the 
establishment of the College of New Jer- 
sey, the Episcopal in the establishment 
of Kings (Columbia) in New York, and 
the Baptist in the establishment of Brown 
University in the Colony of Rhode Island. 
Dartmouth, says Professor Charles F. 
Richardson, was the legitimate outgrowth 
of the awakening in religious and literary 

* Richardson & Clark's College Book, p. 55, 
f Ibid., p. 63. 



123 IVITHLV COLLEGE WALLS. 



thought which distinguished the second 
half of the last century.* ** Rutgers was 
founded," declares the charter, '' for the 
education of youth in the learned lan- 
guages, liberal and useful arts and 
sciences, and especially in divinity, pre- 
paring them for the ministry and other 
good offices ;" and in the past as in 
its present government the Dutch Re- 
formed Church rules. The name of Union 
College sprang from a desire to establish 
an institution free from sectarian influ- 
ences, and yet with a hearty determi- 
nation that full religious, if not clerical, 
purposes should prevail. 

In the rapid establishment of colleges 
in the present century the clergy have 
had the first place. As the population 
has gone westward the -college has fol- 
lowed. The Congregational, Episcopal, 
Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and the 
other churches, as they have endeavored 
to serve the people, as the people have 

'^Richardson & Clark*s College Book, p. 141. 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH, 1 29 

gone westward, have found that the 
Christian and, as they thought, the de- 
nominational college was an essential 
agency in their service. The old Western 
Reserve College, now Adelbert College of 
Western Reserve University, had its origin, 
remarks its second president. Rev. Dr. G. 
E. Pierce, ^' in a religious want deeply felt 
by the devout men who laid its founda- 
tions. It was to be the instrument for 
providing an able, learned, and pious 
ministry for the infant churches which 
pious missionaries were gathering and nur- 
turing with untiring zeal and energy. It 
was a missionary establishment for plant- 
ing the Gospel on a new field." "^ Those 
who co-operated in its establishment were, 
largely, missionaries of the Connecticut 
Missionary Society. In a similar spirit 
and motive were laid the foundations of 
Marietta College. Its first president, on 

* This and the following instances are taken from the 
early reports of the American Education Society, founded 
in 1815. 



130 WITHnV COLLEGE WALLS. 

his induction into office, was charged, 
in words still borne in Latin upon the 
shield of Harvard, to conduct the insti- 
tution "• for Christ and the Church." 
The founding of Wabash College of 
Indiana is a marvellous example of Chris- 
tian devotion, sacrifice, and forethought. 
Painfully oppressed with the need of 
ministers in that State, a few home 
missionaries, after three days of consulta- 
tion and prayer, resolved to make the 
beginning of a college. Thus deter- 
mined, says one who was present at the 
meeting, *^ we then proceeded in a body 
to the intended location, in the primeval 
forest, and there, kneeling on the snow, 
we dedicated the ground to the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for a 
Christian college." Thus was once again 
wrought the duty voiced in Lowell's 
sublime line, 

*' We ourselves must Pilgrims be." 



Illinois College sprang into being from the 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH, I3I 

union of two independent movements, the 
one of home missionaries of Illinois and 
the other of a society of Yale College. 
Knox College was established in 1837 by 
a colony of Christian families, who 
wished to diffuse the influences of educa- 
tion and of religion through an impor- 
tant section. Beloit originated in the 
combined deliberations and action of the 
Congregational and Presbyterian churches 
and ministers of Wisconsin and Northern 
Illinois. Oberlin was founded bv tw^o 
men, John J. Shipherd and Philo Stewart. 
Shipherd was the pastor of a Presbyterian 
church in Ohio, but resigned his pastor- 
ate for the purpose of extending Chris- 
tian education. Ste^vart was a missionary 
among the Choctaws in Mississippi. These 
two men so held a Christian ideal of 
education that they often referred to it as 
the pattern shown in the Mount. Iowa 
College was founded by the so-called 
Iowa Band, a dozen graduates of An- 
dover, who entered that State in 1840. 



t^2 V/ 1 THIN COLLEGE VVALLS. 

The collecres that are founded in Minne- 
sota, South Dakota, and Washington — 
Carleton, Yankton, and Whitman — are the 
outgrowth of the purpose of ministers 
and their official associates to secure a 
learned, vigorous ministry. It is, with 
the exception of State universities, seldom 
that the single motive of intellectual 
culture has been found sufficient to estab- 
lish a college in a new community. 
The motive has taken on an ethical, 
religious, and even clerical aim. 

But, further, the church has not only 
founded the college ; it has also, in its 
early and usually feeble years, fostered 
the college. That it is well to subject a 
college to ecclesiastical control is a prop- 
osition no longer debatable. Neither 
church courts nor church councils are 
well fitted to conduct educational institu- 
tions. Such ecclesiastical and educational 
marriages have been, on the whole, not 
often solemnized, and when they have 
occurred, a separation has frequently 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH 133 

resulted. But, notwithstanding the lack of 
official control, the church has yet made 
its influence felt, and felt most power- 
fully, in the management of the college. 
In the denominational colleges, of which 
we have more than two hundred, promi- 
nent ministers and laymen of the re- 
spective denominations usually compose a 
majority of the governing boards. The 
funds are, to no small degree, drawn 
from members of the church which 
the college represents. But even if the 
college have no special ecclesiastical affil- 
iations, the churches have representatives 
upon the board of trustees, and in their 
conventions receive reports of the insti- 
tutions through their officers. It is, how- 
ever, by means of societies formed by 
the churches, and which are the agents of 
the churches, that the colleges are the 
most frequently and to the largest ad- 
vantage aided. For more than thirty 
years the Western College Society, as a 
distinct organization, fostered about a 



134 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

score of colleges. This society came to 
the relief of institutions scattered from 
the Ohio to the Pacific when their 
distress was great. President Smith of 
Marietta College affirms that the few 
thousand dollars given to that institution 
*' saved it to the church." President 
Sturtevant of Illinois College likewise 
declares that this ''society has saved 
the college from extinction, and placed 
it in a position of great promise of 
lasting usefulness." The first college 
which was able to dispense with the 
assistance of the Western College Society 
— the Western Reserve — was a college 
one of whose early presidents, it is said, 
**had often, at the hour of midnight, 
lain upon his bed revolving in his own 
mind the best method of winding up 
the affairs of the institution, without 
having dared to lisp it to an associate 
in office." Thus did this society foster 
the colleges of the West. 

While the church bears these impor- 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCLL. 135 



tant relations to the college, the college 
bears relations no less important to the 
church. These relations may be compre- 
hended in the general remark that the 
college gives to the church its most nec- 
essary factors and elements. The college 
furnishes the church with an educated 
mxinistry and an educated laity. The col= 
lege not only trains the minister; it often 
*' converts" the minister. Revivals are 
more frequent and more powerful in many 
colleges than in the average community. 
In them have hundreds of men been led 
to devote their hearts to Christ and their 
lives to His special service. It is made to 
appear from the induction of careful facts 
that, in many institutions a large share 
of whose graduates enter the ministry, 
fully one half of those who choose this 
calHng become Christians while pursuing 
the collegiate d^urse. In 1853, Professor 
W. S. Tyler, of Amherst College, wrote 
that of all the ministers graduated at 
the institution one quarter were hopefully 



136 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

converted in college."^ Among them are 
no less than thirteen foreign missionaries 
and no less than twenty-eight persons who 
have been officers of either colleges or 
theological seminaries. The list contains 
such names as Professor E. S. Snell, Pro- 
fessor B. B. Edwards, and Professor H. B. 
Hackett. No condition gives so great 
promise of a young man becoming a 
Christian as a four years' residence in a 
Christian college. College life contains 
fewer direct temptations than business 
life, and more and stronger inducements 
to the personal acceptance of Christ. The 
revival which often sweeps through not a 
few of the colleges, and which is at once 
the result and the cause of the religious 
tendencies of many students, is more com- 
mon in Western than in Eastern institu- 
tions ; but many men in the colleges of 
New England are thus moved. Dr. 
H. Q. Butterfield, formerly president 
of Olivet, speaks of a certain collecre 



* 



Prayer for Colleges, pp. 131-145. 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH. 13/ 



as ''a revival college." Dr. G. F. Magoun, 
formerly president of Iowa College, writes 
of '' five successive years of revival, and 
the very considerable number of students 
brought to Christ therein." This strong 
religious tendency of many colleges is evi- 
denced in a remark of a professor in one 
of the daily prayer-meetings of the stu- 
dents : "' My young friends, Jesus Christ 
is in the liabit of visiting Iowa College." 
Without the religious influences of the 
college, the need of ministers would be 
far more dire than it now is. A reason 
of the relative increase in the number of 
theological students, in seminaries of the 
Congregational order, coming from the 
West rather than from the East, lies in 
the fact that the colleges of the West are, 
on the whole, more thoroughly pervaded 
with Christian influences than the colleges 
of the East. A cause, also, of the lament- 
able and constant decrease of the w^hole 
number of students in many theological 
seminaries in the last decade may be 



138 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

found in the fact that revivals and other 
instruments of Christian work have not, 
in this period, been in such effective oper- 
ation as at many other times. 

Many students^ also, who do not enter 
the ministry become Christians in college. 
The college is a centre of positive relig- 
ious influence. About this centre every 
student moves, and touched by this influ- 
ence he is and must be. Merchants and 
manufacturers, lawyers, judges, and doc- 
tors, bankers, architects, and teachers, who 
are now the noble support of many 
churches, were thus brought to a supreme 
love of God. 

It is thus made evident that the rela- 
tions of the church and of the college 
are fundamental and intimate. It would 
not be rash to afiirm that neither institu- 
tion could for a long time prosper with- 
out the other. In prosperity the one 
rises with the other ; in adversity the 
one with the other declines. If the piety 
of the church is warm and aggressive, 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCLL, 1 39 

the college halls will be filled with throngs 
of young men assiduously devoting them- 
selves to Christian self-culture. If the 
piety of the church runs low, the college 
v\all at once feel the baneful influence of 
religious indifference. At the close of the 
last and at the opening of the present 
century the students of Yale College 
were notorious for their infidelity. In the 
year 1799, of the Senior class only two 
members had made a public profession of 
religion ; of the Junior and Freshmen only 
one each, and of the Sophomore, if any 
at all, not more than one.^ But in this 
respect the college was only the picture 
of the community. In the city of New 
Haven, in the last five years of the last 
century, outside of the college, there were 
only very few persons under twenty-five 
years of age who had made a pro- 
fession of religion. The elder President 
Dwight, through his sermons, which are 
preserved in his system of divinity, con- 
* Prayer for Colleges, pp. 147, 148. 



I40 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

verted the college to Christian stand- 
ards, and, converting the college, helped 
to roll back the tide of scoffing 
doubt which was sweeping through the 
nation."^ The college and the church 
thus act and react upon each other. The 
college gives the church its ministry ; the 
church gives the college its presidents 
and not a few of its other teachers. The 
college helps to maintain a high standard 
of Christian education ; the church sends 
the noblest sons of her noblest members 
to the college to be trained for useful- 
ness. The college fosters that wisdom 
and discipline required for the efficiency 
and stability of the church ; the church 
fosters the material and religious interests 
of the college. The church helps to make 
the college, and the college the church. 
The imperative character of the recip. 

* A considerable number of the first class which the elder 
Timothy Dwight taught ''assumed the names of the 
principal English and French infidels ; and were more 
familiarly known by them than by their own.*' (Dwight's 
Theology, Life, etc., p. xxxviii.) 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH. I4I 

rocal demands of the church upon the col- 
lege, and of the college upon the church, 
IS more evident in the West than in the 
East. The Christian influences of West- 
ern colleges are, as a body, stronger than 
the Christian influences of Eastern col- 
leges. The graduates of Eastern institu- 
tions entering the ministry are few, and 
have been, until recent years, gradually 
becoming tower. One half of the college 
graduates in the seven Congregational 
seminaries of theology, excluding one col- 
lege from the list, are now from the 
West. The American Board of Commis- 
sioners for Foreign Missions depends 
in an increasing degree upon Western 
colleges for the enlarging and recruiting 
of its forces. In 1880, Dr. E. K. Alden, 
the Home Secretary, writing of the 
places of the education of the ordained 
missionaries then in the service, re- 
marked : '' Of one hundred and thirty- 
nine who received a collegiate education, 
thirty are alumni of Amherst ; twenty- 



142 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

■ — — * 

two of Williams ; fifteen of Beloit ; seven 
of Dartmouth ; six of New Jersey ; five 
each of Bowdoin and of Oberlin ; four 
each of Middlebury and of Hamilton ; 
three each of the University of V"ermont, 
of Western Reserve, and of Illinois ; two 
each of Union, of Knox, and of Ripon ; 
and the remaining sixteen represent six- 
teen institutions, one of which is Harvard 
and one of which is Iowa. While Har- 
vard College has given us during the en- 
tire seventy years but four of its gradu- 
ates, only one of whom is now living, 
Beloit, Wisconsin, which was founded 
only thirty-three years ago, has given us 
twelve, of whom eleven are in active ser- 
vice. Other Western institutions, nearly 
all of them quite young, have added 
twenty-three to the number.'*"^ The 
churches of the interior States demand 
ministers of the colleges of these States ; 
but the churches of the East, and the 

* Paper at annual meeting of A. B. C. F. M., iS8o. 



THE COLLEGE AXD THE CHURCH, 143 

churches around the world, make the 
same imperative call. 

These reciprocal demands of the 
church upon the college, and of the col- 
lege upon the church, become further 
evident in view of the formative state of 
society in the newer commonwealths. 
Every people that moves into a new coun- 
try is necessarily in a plastic condition. 
However old the settlers themselves may 
be, the new physical conditions necessitate 
a social order more or less new, adapted 
to the new conditions. A large part, 
therefore, of the newer sections of our 
"New World is in a plastic state. The 
social order can therefore be formed, and 
formed with ease. In such a process of 
formation the college depends upon the 
church, and the church in turn depends 
upon the college. If either fails, both 
fail. If the church stands in the com- 
munity as a monument to the worth of 
the human soul, the college stands like- 
wise as a monument to the worth of the 



144 WITHIN CO I LEGE WALLS, 

human mind. If the church through the 
minister is to teach man in the things 
of God, the college must prepare the 
minister who thus teaches. It is not 
without meaning that from the very 
founding of the first Congregational 
church in America, and from the found- 
ing of the first Congregational college, 
Harvard, down to the founding of the 
newest college, and of the newest church, 
in a Pacific State, the college has always 
followed the church, and the church pre- 
ceded the college. Both church and col- 
lege have worked together ; both have 
made and met reciprocal demands each 
upon the other, all for the formation of 
a Christian society within the bounds of 
the commonwealth. 

It has sometimes been said that the 
colleges of the West are to save Amer- 
ican Christianity. Whether the remark 
be true or false, it is evident that the 
star of Christianity, like the star of em- 
pire, moves westw^ard. In membership 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH. I45 

the churches of the West are approach- 
ing the churches of the East on a gal- 
lop. In benevolences several churches of 
the West are the peers and even the 
superiors of the most generous churches 
of the East. If the Western churches 
are to maintain this advance, and even 
to make further progress, the colleges and 
the churches must work together. The 
churches are to support the colleges by 
sending to them their choicest gifts of 
young men and women. They are also 
to support the colleges through gifts for 
endowment. In turn, the colleges should 
give to the churches young men and 
w^omen with minds well disciplined, with 
hearts well founded in righteousness, 
with characters established in intelligent 
Christian principles. Such reciprocal giv- 
ing and receiving represents the present 
condition in many States. In Minnesota, 
for instance, Carleton has the esteem of 
the Congregational churches, and these 
churches are sending to Carleton the 



146 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

offerings of their sons and daughters, and 
also of their substance. These churches 
look upon the college as simply their 
agent, their clearing-house, their represen- 
tative, in which and through which they 
are equipping laborers for the salvation 
of the world. Carleton College in turn 
looks upon these churches, from whom it 
has received great aid, as those to whom 
it is to extend its benefits in the uphold- 
ing of a high type of Christian manhood 
and womanhood, and in the inculcation 
of a devout and aggressive and intelli- 
gent piety. The attitude of this college, 
like the attitude of every Christian col- 
lege, is simply the exemplification of the 
motto of Harvard, that it is founded and 
exists '' for Christ and the Church." 
Such reciprocity is customary : the one 
denominational college of a State is 
regarded at once as the child and the 
parent of the churches ; the dem.ands are 
reciprocal ; the advantages are reciprocal. 
Each institution works through and for 



THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH, H/ 

the Other, and both for the salvation of 
humanity in all righteousness. 

It is well for men in college to know 
that the noble advantages which they are 
enjoying represent the noble sacrifices of 
the Christian people of this country. 
Without these sacrifices — usually offered 
with joy — most colleges would not have 
been founded, and without these found- 
ations tens of thousands of men would 
have been denied an education. With 
a great price have they come into the 
freedom of a liberal education. 



14^ WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



IX. 



THE COLLEGE FITTING FOR BUSINESS. 

The prevailing prejudice against college 
men as candidates for business is at once 
reasonable and unreasonable. It is reason 
able, in that it is based on the belief that 
college men are not willing to '* shovel," 
to do menial tasks ; and some college 
men are not willing. The prejudice is 
unreasonable, in that college men who are 
worthy sons of a worthy alma mater are 
willing to do any work, however menial, 
which it becomes their duty to do. 
Business is an art, and every art is to be 
learned by the practice of it. No art is 
thoroughly known if the humbler elements 
are unknown. Therefore the worthy col- 
lege man who proposes to enter business 
is willing to '^ shovel." 



THE COLLEGE FITTLNG FOR BUSLNESS, I49 



The simple truth is that the college 
man entering business does not spend so 
long a time learning the elements of his 
calling as the boy whose formal education 
ceased at fifteen. The following concrete 
assumption does not put the question in 
a form too strong : Tw^o boys are each 
of the age of eighteen ; their abilities are 
equal ; their training has been identical ; 
both propose to become merchants or 
manufacturers. On leaving the High 
School John enters business ; on leaving 
the High School Edgar enters college. 
Four years pass : John has become the 
master of many details and of the chief 
principles of his work. In these same 
four years Edgar has secured his college 
education. Each has become of the age 
of twenty-two. The day following Com- 
mencement Edgar puts on his overalls 
and begins where John began four years 
before. In six months Edgar will have 
come to know the business as well as 
John had learned it in the first year; in 



I50 WITHIN CO LIEGE WALLS. 

the first year Edgar will have come to 
know the business as well as John had 
learned it in the first two and a half 
years ; in the first two years Edgar will 
have learned more than John learned in 
the first four years ; in his first four years 
Edgar will have caught up in knowledge 
and efficiency with John, knowledge and 
efficiency which John secured in his eight 
years ; and from this time Edgar will go 
ahead of John with a swiftness increasing 
with each succeeding year. 

In hundreds of factories and shops and 
stores this assumption is proved to be the 
absolute truth. And the reason of it is 
clear enough : the college man has been 
taught to see, to think, to judge. It is 
the question of the trained athlete against 
untrained strength, of the disciplined sol- 
dier against raw bravery. 

When Mr. Andrew^ Carnegie says in his 
famous diatribe that the college man 
*'has not the slightest chance, entering 
business at twenty, against the boy who 



THE COLLEGE FITTING FOR BUSINESS, I5I 

swept the office or who began as ship- 
ping clerk at fourteen," one is inclined 
to ask him respecting the graduates with 
whom it has been his misfortune to be as- 
sociated. The facts as well as general 
reasonings too are against Mr. Carnegie's 
assertion. In a group of sixty-five grad- 
uates, whose homes or business relations 
are in the single city of New York, can 
be found eighteen bankers, fifteen leading 
railroad managers, ten manufacturers, ten 
merchants, seven presidents of chief in- 
surance companies, and five conspicuous 
publishers. Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, the 
president of the New York Central Rail- 
road, is reported to have said that hun- 
dreds of college men have begun in these 
last years at the bottom in railroad work 
and have soon distanced the uneducated 
boy and man. To attempt a catalogue of 
the men who have thus w^orked would be 
to name leading men in every department 
of industrial and commercial life. 

I am not, of course, saying that the 



152 JFITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

lack of a college training is a prophecy 
of the lack of success. I am prepared 
even to allow that a man who has no col- 
lege training may be able to secure a 
greater triumph than any man who has a 
college training. College training is only 
an element of the equipment. But I am 
saying that any man, however gifted by 
nature, becomes through the agency of a 
college training the better fitted for doing 
the largest service in a commercial or 
other calling to which he may devote 
himself. The college is not designed to 
train merchants or manufacturers, but it is 
designed to train men who, becoming mer- 
chants or manufacturers, will be better 
merchants or manufacturers than they 
could be without the training. 

The advantage which the man in busi- 
ness receives from a thorough training is 
greater today and is to become even 
greater to-morrow than ever before in the 
world's history. This advantage and the 
source of it are suggested in a letter to 



THE COLLEGE FITTING FOR BUSINESS. 153 

me written by one of the managers of a 
great insurance company. He says: 

*'The training of a college course be- 
comes more and more important as years 
roll on and business is conducted on a 
larger scale and with a broader field than 
formerly, and as judgment forms a larger 
and luck a smaller factor than in the 
earlier years of the country's history. A 
boy can learn to measure tape or retail 
groceries without a college education, but 
for the management of men and the con- 
trol of large enterprises the more com- 
plete and thorough his training the more 
likely he is to be successful." 

Consolidation and combination represent 
the modern commercial method. If indi- 
vidualism is becoming more important in 
civil and domestic relations, it is becom- 
ing less important in mercantile. There- 
fore the demand for knowledge w^hich 
shall be both exact and comprehensive, 
for wisdom which shall be of details and 
yet not petty but large, for force 



154 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

which shall be aggressive without rash- 
ness, is becoming more and more impera- 
tive. And where can one look for knowl- 
edge and wisdom and force with a surer 
hope of finding these noble qualities in 
their noblest development elsewhere than 
in the worthy American college? 

But the one phrase, American college, 
has ceased to represent a single form of 
education. Individualism has touched the 
college quite as deeply as it has any de- 
partment of life. The ^' elective system " 
is individualism applied by the college 
student. It is no longer true that 
the graduate entering business knows 
Latin, Greek, mathematics, and nothing 
else. It is true that what he knows out- 
side of these three departments may in- 
clude more knowledge than what he 
knows of them. If the purpose of a gen- 
eral training is the chief aim of a college, 
as I believe it is, this aim may be gained 
in pursuing certain studies which may 
themselves prove to be of immediate, 



THE COLLEGE FITTING FOR BUSINESS, 155 

definite, and practical worth. If the 
college man find, in the middle of his 
course, that he will probably become a 
banker, why should he hesitate to con- 
centrate his attention upon such studies 
as Political and Social Science, Finance, 
Administrative and Constitutional Law, 
Constitutional History? If the student 
discover that he has special aptitudes, 
why should he delay, when he has 
passed the half-way stone, to train these 
aptitudes? Let faculty be made facility. 
The student need have no fear of thus 
becoming narrow. His previous training 
will save him. College training should be 
broad, yet with special fitnesses for life's 
special * work ; college training should be 
training for life's special work, but it 
should be saved from narrowness. The 
college man proposing to become a mer- 
chant or manufacturer or administrator 
should have before himself the twin pur- 
pose of becoming a business man and a 
business man. 



IS6 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



X. 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE COLLEGE 
GRADUATE. 

I HAVE had an examination made of 
the six volumes known as *' Appletons* 
Cyclopaedia of American Biography/' The 
work contains sketches, more or less com- 
plete, of fifteen thousand one hundred 
and forty-two persons. These persons are 
^Americans. Most of them were born on 
our soil. Those who were not born here 
lived and worked here. The book is sup- 
posed to represent the most conspicuous 
fifteen thousand persons of our American 
history. It is necessarily subject to limi- 
tations. Many who have wrought better 
than these who are here sketched are not 
introduced. But it is the least incom- 
plete of all collections of the lives of the 
more conspicuous Americans. Two of my 



PRE-EMINENCE OE THE GRADUATE. 157 



friends, students in Adelbert College of 
Western Reserve University, Herbert 
Seely Bigelow and Alfred John Wright, 
have examined each of these more than 
fifteen thousand names. The facts which 
we set out to discover were : How many 
of these persons are college graduates, 
and how many are not ? What is the 
education of those who are not college 
graduates ? To what colleges are those to 
be credited who are graduates? To what 
professions do the graduates belong? 

The following table represents the re- 
sults of the examination. A word ex- 
planatory may be fitting. It can be best 
given by an example. Amherst College is 
represented in the Cyclopaedia by one hun- 
dred and two graduates. Of these, twenty- 
seven are clergymen, four soldiers, twenty- 
four educators, and so on to the end of 
the list. A similar presentation is made in 
the case of each of the forty-three colleges 
named. The term '^ Non-College" and the 
figures following show the number of men 



158 



WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 



Amherst 

Bowdoin 

Brown 

Colby 

Columbia 

Cornell 

Dartmouth. 

Dickinson 

Georgetow"! 

Georgia U 

Hamilton 

Hampden-Sidney 

Harvard 

Hobart 

Jefferson 

Kenyon 

Madison 

Marietta 

Miami 

Michigan U 

Middlebury 

Nashville 

New York 

North Carolina 

Oberlin 

Pennsylvania 

Princeton 

Rochester 

Rutgers. 

South Carolina 

St. John 

Transylvania 

Trinity 

Union 

Vermont, 

Virginia 

Washington 

Washington and Jefferson 

Wesleyan 

Western Reserve 

Williams. 

William and Mary 

Yale 

Small Eastern 

Small Southern 

Small Western 

Foreign 

Academy 

Non-College 

Total 



Per cent representing col- 
lege graduates 



bo 



U 



27 
24 
53 

5 
47 

I 
60 
18 

2 

I 
20 

14 
204 

12 

19 
5 
9 



o 
c/) 



5 



28 

A 

6 
I 

40 
100 

3 

23 

7 

I 

4 
22 

65 
6 

9 

3 

6 

16 

5 
43 

7 
194 

71 

57 

29 

211 

59 
io8o 

2744 



58 



4 
3 
6 
2 

12 
I 

10 
I 



2 

39 



I 

6 
I 

I 

t6 

I 

4 

3 
2 

I 

6 

7 

37 

9 

13 

12 

20 

436 
1264 



1752 



.03 






7 
15 
33 

3 
38 

'36 

15 

3 

7 

II 

4 

162 

6 

7 
3 



2 
6 
2 

TO 
12 

30 

^9 
I 

5 

15 

4 

4 

4 

29 

7 



4 
2 

23 

15 

149 

13 

32 
14 

25 

68 

769 



1678 



C/2 



3 

PQ 



so 



t 

21 

3 
15 

I 
22 

3 



5 . 
4 

5'. 
50 i 

•!■ 

2 
2 . 

9 
2 

9 
4 

I 

I7|. 
2 

7 

44 



1310 



■33 



> 



3 
3 
9 

12 
1 

7i 
I 



39 



12 

4j 

ii 



41 ... 

2 2 

13 6 

2! 2 

8: 1 



4 

2 

2 

12 

29 
55 
13 
25 

k;. 
10 
6:; 



7, 

^i 

19 
41 

61 



60! 



IT05 



34 
884! 466 



515 



o 

«-> 

< 



7 

15 

9 

2 

17 
I 

4 

2 

I 
9 

93 
1 

3 

I 

4 

I 

3 



6 

1 

I 

II 

21 

4 

3 

I 

2 

4 
16 

3 
I 

2 

I 

I 
I 

9 
2 

53 
12 

21 

7 

54 

39 

668 



1124 



c 



12 

2 

18 






3 
2 
I 
I 

91 
3 
2 
I 



34 

23 

I 

4 

5 
2 

4 
4 
8 

3 
7 
3 



II 

3 

43 
12 

25 

5 

5» 

36 

449 

912 



17 029 .37 .46 



8 

2 

20 

39 
525 

630 



104 



PRE-EMINENCE OF TZ.^E GRADUATE, 150 





1 
» * 

o 

CJ 

u 

3 

w 

24 
i6 

27 

3 

21 


en 
'♦J 

C 

"u 
a) 

12 

7 


4J 

C/5 

"c5 

CI 
w. 
3 


. — > 

I 
2 

3 


c 
u 

3 

3 
ex 

I 

3 
2 


v.* 

c, 

> 

3 
2 


u 






^1" 


Ou 
I 
2 


Whole No. 

of Persons 

named in 

Cyclopaedia 


Amherst 


102 


Bowdoin 


104 

189 

20 


Brown 


Colby 

Columbia 


10 
5 

9 
3 

I 
3 

37 

I 


I 
I 

3 

I 


3 







1 


1 


198 
20 


Cornell 


Dartmouth 


44 
7 

4! 
i6| 

2' 

95 
1 


4 

2 
I 










I 
I 


208 


Dickinson 


53 
12 
21 


Georgetown 

Georcjfia U 


... 








Hamilton 












I 
9 


68 


Hampden-Sidney 

Harvard . . 

Hobart . 

Jefferson 


14 

3 


2 

32 
2 


I 


. . 


2 


30 
883 

30 
46 

^3 
16 


KenyoD 

Madison. . ^ 


2 

I 
I 












.... 


... 


Marietta . . . , 


I 














8 


Miami 










... 


.... 


24 

16 


Michigan U, . > 




I 
2 

'6 
2 
2 

21 

3 
2 

1 
2 

I 
2 

6 

3 
3 


2 
2 


1 
1 

I 
8 


I 
J 




Middleburv 

New York 


5 
I 
6 
4 
5 
7 
24 
6 
2 

4 
2 

2 
22 
6 
8 
2 

"is 

1 
26 

5 
83 
18 

13 

T7 

7i 

42 

345 

1016 
.6t 





1 


I 
"i 


60 

" 

57 
56 
12 










Oberlin 










Pennsylvania . 

Princeton 

Rutgers 


2 

I 


7 
11 


I 





.... 


I 


175 

319 

22 

43 
60 


South Carolina 


T 

1 


3 

1 






... 




St. John 

Tranivlvania 


16 
18 


Trinity 

Union.. 

Vermont 


I 

4 
2 

I 










I 
I 


45 
188 

35 
54 
17 


2 

3 
3 


... 


.... 





Virginia - 


Washington 








Wasliington and Jefferson 


I 

5 

I 

14 
I 

38 
9 
15 
^9 
80 

25 
164 

522 
■^3 


! 










14 
54 
13 

157 

82 

7^3 
171 

230 
132 
507 
949 
8867 


Wesleyan 

Western Reserve 


= 





2 














Williams 


i ^ 

^5 

2 

4 

6 

II 

206 

3-3 
•30 


I 
7 

H 
6 

7 
3 

14 

15 

605 

765 
.189 










William and Mary 

Yale 

Smal 1 Eastern 


2 

3 

1 
I 

I 

3 
144 

166 
.11 


I 

I 

I 

4 

99 

107 
•037 


I 

4 

7 
233 

249 
.036 


'"6 

I 

1 

6 

H5 

180 

.16 


Small Southern 

Small Western 

Foreign 


Academy 


Non-College 


Total 


15142 


Percent representing col 


•35 



l6o pV/rUW COLLEGE WALLS. 



in the specified callings whose names are 
found in the Cyclopaedia who are not 
graduates. The ''Total" stands for the 
number of all the men represented in the 
Cyclopaedia. The last line represents the 
percentage of the graduates found be- 
longing to each of the callings specified. 
Of the 15,142 men named in the book, 
5326 are college men, or slightly more 
than one third. Of them also 941 are 
what may be called academy but not col- 
lege men. It is to me exceedingly signifi- 
cant that so large a proportion are col- 
lege-bred. The whole number of graduates 
of American colleges from the beginning 
until the present time does not certainly 
exceed two hundred thousand. The num- 
ber may be nearer one hundred and fifty 
thousand. Of these, five thousand have 
done such work as to deserve a memorial 
more or less permanent. According to 
the larger estimate, one man, therefore, in 
every forty men graduating has thus de- 
served well. I recently asked a distin- 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE, l6l 

guished Professor of American History 
how many persons had ever hved in 
America. He was unable to give me an 
answer. I assume that at least a hundred 
millions of people, who have lived and 
whose dust mingles with the common 
dust of this new soil, have not had a col- 
lege training. Yet out of these hundred 
millions only ten thousand have so 
wrought as to deserve such recognition 
as is found in a cyclopaedia of biography. 
Only ten thousand out of ten thousand 
times ten thousand ! Therefore only one 
out of every ten thousand. But of the 
college men one in every forty has at- 
tained such a recognition. Into one 
group gather together ten thousand in- 
fants and send no one to college : one 
person out of that great gathering will 
attain through some work a certain fame. 
Into another group gather forty college 
men on the day of their graduation, andj 
out of these forty, one will attain recog- 
nition. It is not very hard to see how 



l62 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

far the proportion is in favor of the col- 
lege man — two hundred and fifty times. I 
will not vouch for the mathematical ac- 
curacy of these estimates; but I do say 
that they are true in their general impres- 
sion and significance. 

We are not to forget that men who go 
to college are in a sense picked men. 
Many of them, without going to college, 
would have wrought conspicuously well. 
The abilities which impelled them to give 
themselves the best training for doing 
their w^ork would have still proved some- 
what efficient without the training. The 
circumstances and conditions which influ- 
enced them toward the college would 
have proved to be generous incentives for 
the rendering of noble service, were they 
bereft of the advantages w^hich the col- 
lege provides. But after all deductions 
are made, it is still just to say that the 
chances are vastly in favor of the man of 
college training rendering the ablest and 
most distinguished service to humanity. 



PRE-EMINENCE OE THE GRADUATE. 1 63 

Among the interesting questions upon 
which this survey sheds Hght is the ques- 
tion, In what vocations is found the largest 
proportion of college men ? I may now 
say that the results of this examination 
were classified under seventeen profes- 
sional divisions: clergymen, soldiers, law- 
yers, statesmen, business men, naval offi- 
cers, authors, physicians, artists, educators, 
scientists, journalists, public men, invent- 
ors, actors, explorers or pioneers, ano 
philanthropists. There are 515 naval offi- 
cers sketched, of whom only 49 are college 
men, or 2.9 per cent. Essentially the 
same proportion is found among soldiers : 
of no less than 1752 names mentioned, 
:6a. do not represent a college training ; 
436 represent only an academical train- 
ing. Of the 107 actors mentioned, only 8 
are college-bred. The percentages found 
in the other callings are as follows : pio- 
neers and explorers, '^.G per cent ; artists, 
10.4 per cent ; inventors, 1 1 per cent ; 
philanthropists, 16 per cent; business men, 



164 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

17 per cent; public men, 18 per cent; 
statesmen, 33 per cent ; authors, 37 per 
cent ; physicians, 46 per cent ; lawyers, 
50 per cent; clergymen, 58 per cent; edu- 
cators, 61 per cent ; scientists, 6^ per cent. 

One is tempted to linger upon these 
figures, to show in detail how they tend 
to prov^e the worth of a college training. 
Forty-six per cent of the physicians noted 
in this book are graduates. It is a noto- 
rious fact that the medical profession has 
v^ery few college-trained members. The 
usual estimate is that one physician in 
every twenty has a college training. Now 
of all the physicians who do such con- 
spicuous work as to deserve a place in 
a cyclopaedia, almost one half are found 
to belong to this small five per cent ; the 
forty-six per cent is found to belong to 
the five per cent ! 

The contrast is not so strong in the 
case of lawyers. It is probable that 
about one fifth of all the lawyers now 
practising are graduates, or twenty per 



PRE-EMINENCE OE THE GRADUATE, 1 65 



cent. But of the lawyers whose names 
appear in this Cyclopaedia, fifty per cent 
are college-bred. In respect to ministers, 
too, we find the same general result. It 
has been to me a little surprising, I will 
confess, that of the 2744 clergymen named 
in this Cyclopaedia, 11 39 are not college 
graduates ; that is to say, fifty-eight per 
cent only are college graduates. The min- 
istry is in general the most learned of 
all the professions. The lists of the first 
graduates of our two oldest colleges show 
that to be a college graduate was not 
identical with being a minister, but the 
lists do show that considerably more 
than one half did enter the ministry. 
In recent times this condition is al- 
together changed. For a long period 
that largest and most aggressive of our 
American churches, the Methodist Epis- 
copal, discouraged the higher education 
as a pathway to the ministry. Clerical 
pioneers, like civil pioneers, it was 
thought, need no college training. But 



1 66 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 

at the present time the face of this great 
church is as strongly set toward the 
college as its back was in the former 
time. It may therefore be due to the 
early and long-continued attitude of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church and certain 
other churches toward education that we 
find no larger proportion than fifty- 
eight per cent among the more eminent 
clergymen representing a college training. 
Among these figures it appears that 
seventeen per cent of the business men 
who have thus won recognition are 
graduates. Although this percentage 
seems small, yet it is exceedingly sig- 
nificant. There are mentioned in this 
Cyclopaedia 1105 men of business. If 
one can by a mathematical imagination 
conceive how many business men there 
are or have been in this country and 
will compare this number of his imagi- 
nation with 1 105, and if on the other 
hand he will compare the 161 business 
men that are graduates who are men- 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE, 1 67 

tioned in this Cyclopaedia with the 
relatively small number of business men 
in this country who have had a college 
training, he will obtain a product show- 
ing how vast is the evidence in favor of 
the worth of a college training. 

In this comparison occur the names of 
forty-three colleges. There are also in- 
cluded several colleges, represented by a 
small number of graduates, which are 
classified as the '' Small Eastern," the 
'' Small Southern," and the '' Small West- 
ern " colleges. 

Let me compare certain of these col- 
leges which are conspicuous and which 
we naturally associate. The first college 
founded in America w^as Harvard, the 
third Yale ; the second was William and 
Mary in 1693 ; but William and Mary after 
a long and noble career is now a college 
hardly more than in name. I may there- 
fore compare our tw^o oldest colleges, and, 
I think I do no injustice in saying, our 
two most conspicuous. Harvard College 



1 68 WITHIN COILEGE WALLS, 

was founded in 1636, Yale in the first 
year of the last century. Harvard, includ- 
ing the class of 1890, has 11,932 grad- 
uates; Yale, 10,576 graduates. Of the 
Harvard graduates, 883 are noted in this 
Cyclopicdia ; of the Yale, 713. Of the 
Harvard, slightly more than seven per 
cent ; of the Yale, slightly less than seven 
per cent. In this same Cyclop«nedia the 
clergy has of Harvard men 204 ; of 
Yale 194. Of soldiers, Harvard 39, Yale 
37; lawyers. Harvard 162, Yale 149; 
statesmen. Harvard 50, Yale 55 ; business 
men, Harvard 39, Yale 19; naval officers, 
Harvard 3, Yale o; authors, Harvard 93, 
Yale 53; physicians. Harvard 91, Yale 43; 
artists. Harvard 12, Yale 4; educators, 
Harvard 95, Yale 83 ; scientists. Harvard 
37, Yale 38 ; journalists. Harvard 14, Yale 
15; public men, Harvard 32, Yale 14; 
inventors, Harvard i, Yale 3 ; philanthro- 
pists. Harvard 9, Yale 6. As one com- 
pares these two sets of figures he is 
struck at once with the similarities and 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE, 1 69 

the dissimilarities. In the number of 
clergymen and of lawyers there is com- 
parative equality. In the number of edu- 
cators each college has a similar credit. 
But in respect to the significant callings 
of the physician and of the author there 
is a great variance : Harvard has 91 
physicians, Yale 43 ; Harvard has 93 
authors, Yale 53. 

I have been questioning myself as to 
the cause of such a dissimilarity. I am 
inclined to think that the reason Har- 
vard has a so much larger number of 
distinguished physicians lies in the fact 
that the Harvard Medical School is as- 
suredly a more conspicuous agency than 
the Yale Medical School, and that it has 
been more easy for the bachelor of Har- 
vard to become a physician through his 
own Medical School than for the Yale 
bachelor to become a physician through 
either the Harvard or his own Medical 
School. The difference between the num- 
ber 9f authors among the Harvard gradu- 



I/O WITIIIX COLLEGE JJ\4LLS. 

ates and among the Yale graduates has 
long been recognized. It has always been 
said that the literary influences of Cam- 
bridge and Boston are stronger than 
those of New Haven and New York. 
American historians have clipped their 
pens into the Harvard ink-bottle. Of our 
historical pentarchy, Bancroft and Motley 
and Parkman and Palfrey and Henry 
Adams are Harvard men. Of our poeti- 
cal pentarchy, Lowell and Holmes and 
Emerson are Harvard men. What is the 
cause of such literary preponderance ? A 
general cause may lie in the fact that 
Boston has been the literary centre of 
the United States. A general cause may 
also lie as far back as the earlier colonial 
period ; the colonial pulpit had a tremen- 
dous influence in the promotion of the 
higher intellectuul interests. I also judge 
that a further and more immediate cause 
of the literary pre-eminence of Harvard 
students is found in the fact that the 
chairs of literature at Harvard have been 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE. I /I 

filled by such teachers as Longfellow and 
Lowell and Edward Tyrrell Channing. 

Over the name of Channing one likes 
to linger. It is to Channing above every 
one else that this pre-eminence is due. 
Mr. Edward Everett Hale says : 

*^ I once heard it said, by a person 
competent to judge, that Harvard College 
had trained the only men in America 
who could write the English language, 
and that its ability to do this began with 
the year 1819 and ended with the year 
185 1. The same person added that who- 
ever chose to look on the college cat- 
alogue would see that those were the 
years when Edward Tyrrell Channing 
began and ended his career as the Boyl- 
ston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. 
This w^as said thirty years ago."^ 

Mr. Hale adds : 

^^ Half a century afterwards, when I was 
an overseer, the president of the time said 

* ** My College Days," Atlantic Monthly^ March, 1893, 
Vol. LXXI., No. 425, pp. 360, 361. 



1/2 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

to me, ^You cannot get people to read 
themes for many years together/ I said, 
* I thank God every day of my Hfe that 
Ned Channing was wilhng to read themes 
for thirty-two years/ ''^ 

The w^ork that the college can do for 
a man in teaching him to write English 
is slight, but is worth much. American 
literature owes a debt to Edward Tyrrell 
Channing which will never be properly 
recognized. Less distinguished than his 
brother, William Ellery Channing, Ameri- 
can literature owes him an obligation 
hardly less than that which the liberal 
church of America owes to the distin- 
guished apostle of Unitarianism. 

But when, in comparing Harvard and 
Yale, we turn to what are called states^ 
men, we find that the advantage lies 
with the college in New Haven. Harvard, 
although having a larger number of grad- 
uates, is credited with only fifty states- 

*Ibid., p. 361. 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE, 1 73 

men, while Yale is credited with fifty- 
fiv^e. It has commonly been said that 
Harvard is more of a literary college 
and Yale more of a college fitting one 
for a political career. It would seem 
that possibly Yale is touched by what 
may be called the American spirit. A 
Harv^ard graduate and also a teacher in 
Harvard has lately said : 

*' The essential object of the institution 
[Yale] is still to educate rather than to 
instruct, to be a mother of men rather 
than a school of doctors. In this Yale 
has been true to the English tradition 
and is, in fact, to America what Oxford 
and Cambridge are to England, a place 
where the tradition of national character 
is maintained, together with a traditional 
learning. If there is a difference, as of 
course there is, between the Yale under- 
tone of crudity and toughness and the 
sweet mellowness of studious and athletic 
life in England, that is not the fault' 
of Yale, but is due to the fact that 



174 IVITI/jy COLLEGE JTALLS. 

English and American society are at 
different intellectual stages. The Yale 
principle is the English principle and the 
only right one. . . . No wonder that 
all America loves Yale, where American 
traditions are vigorous, American instincts 
are unchecked, and young men are 
trained and made eager for the keen 
struggles of American life." ^ 

In a word, Yale seems to be more 
American than Harvard. Political life, 
statesmanship, represent a very important 
part of American life. Therefore a larger 
number of distinguished men of Yale we 
do find in statesmanship than of Harvard. 

Let me also make comparisons of cer- 
tain other colleges. I select, as standing 
at the head of the list, Amherst and 
Bowdoin. Amherst is credited with 102 
men of distinction, Bowdoin with 104. 
Let us run through the list and see how 
in respect to professions the balance 



* Harvard Monthly, '' A Glimpse of Yale," by George 
Santayana, December, 1892, Vol. XV., No. 3, p. 95. 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE. 1/5 

stands. Of clergymen Amherst has 27, 
Bowdoin 24 ; soldiers, Amherst 4, Bowdoin 
3 ; lawyers, Amherst 7, Bowdoin 1 5 ; states- 
men, Amherst 4, Bowdoin 10; business 
men, each 3 ; naval officers, Amherst o, 
Bowdoin i ; authors, Amherst 7, Bow- 
doin 15; physicians, each 8; artists, 
Amherst o, Bowdoin 2 ; educators, Am- 
herst 24, Bowdoin 16; scientists, Am- 
herst 12, Bowdoin 2. Also put down 
side by side the old college of William 
and Mary that has practically ceased to 
be and the newer college of Jefferson's 
creation, the University of Virginia, that 
has and is to have a very great influence 
in the intellectual life of the South. Will- 
iam and Mary has 82 men of fame, the 
University of Virginia 54. Of clergymen, 
the University of Virginia has 9, Will- 
iam and Mary 7 ; soldiers, University of 
Virginia 4, William and Mary 7 ; lawyers, 
University of Virginia 8, William and 
Mary 15 ; statesmen. University of Vir- 
ginia 8, William and Mary 29 ; educa- 



1 7^ WITHIN COLLEGE JVALLS. 

tors, University of Virginia 8, William 
and Mary 5. 

Dartmouth and Brown are credited with 
comparatively the same number of distin- 
guished graduates, Dartmouth having 208, 
Brown 189. Observe the similarities and 
dissimilarities in the different callings. 
Brown has 53 clergymen, Dartmouth 60 
Brown has 6 soldiers, Dartmouth 10 
Brown has 33 lawyers, Dartmouth 36 
Brown has 21 statesmen, Dartmouth 22 
Brown has 12 physicians, Dartmouth 8 
Browm has 27 educators, Dartmouth 44. 

Compare also two colleges . dissimilar 
in history and association, Williams and 
the University of Pennsylvania. The 
University of Pennsylvania is said to have 
175 distinguished men among its grad- 
uates, Williams 157. Included in and 
making up these numbers the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania is credited with 40 
clergymen, Williams 43 ; University of 
Pennsylvania, 2 soldiers, Williams 6; 
University of Pennsylvania, 30 lawyers, 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE, I// 

Williams 23 ; University of Pennsylvania, 
7 statesmen, Williams 12 ; University of 
Pennsylvania, 12 business men, Williams 
7 ; University of Pennsylvania, 1 1 authors, 
Williams 9 ; University of Pennsylvania, 
34 physicians, Williams 1 1 ; University of 
Pennsylvania, 7 educators, Williams 26. 

As one goes through these compari- 
sons one is struck^ as in the case of 
Yale and Harv^ard, with the similarities 
and dissimilarities. Similarities, however, 
are somewhat constant. Colleges on the 
whole seem to have about the same 
proportion of men in the different call- 
ings. And yet observe the contrasts. 
Amherst is credited with 4 statesmen, 
Bowdoin 10; Amherst with 7 authors, 
Bowdoin 15. Why these marked differ- 
ences ? We know that from Bow- 
doin came Longfellow and Hawthorne, 
Franklin Pierce and John A. Andrew. 
And we also know that these men had 
their college days in a time when 
Amherst was in its feeble infancy. It 



178 WITIIIX COLLEGE WALLS. 



would seem that the earlv forces at 
Bowdoin employed either in attracting 
men or in offering tuition were some- 
what stronger than were the forces of 
the Massachusetts college. Amherst has 
given to the world a Storrs, a Beecher, 
a Roswell D. Hitchcock. But the college 
days of these men were after the college 
days of Longfellow, of Hawthorne, and 
of Franklin Pierce. William and Mary, 
too, has turned out far more statesmen 
than the University of Mrginia, the child 
of the brain of Thomas Jefferson. But 
William and Mary was the chief Vir- 
ginia college in the eighteenth century. 
It helped to make the men who helped 
to make the great Revolution. 

I have been, I confess, a little sur- 
prised to find that Dartmouth has not ed- 
ucated a greater number of distinguished 
lawyers. It is commonly understood that 
the training given at this college is 
specially promotive of legal power and 
legal discipline. The names of Rufus 



Pre-eminence of the graduate, 179 

Choate and Daniel Webster occur. And 
yet Dartmouth has educated only three 
more distinguished lawyers than Brown, 
and fewer than Harvard or Columbia or 
Princeton or Yale ; only seven more than 
Union, only six more than the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. But Dartmouth 
has trained a greater number of edu- 
cators than Brown, as forty-four is greater 
than twenty-seven. It may be that the 
cause of this lies in the fact that Dart- 
mouth has been a country college, at- 
tended by country boys. Country boys 
are usually poor in college, poor before 
college and poor after college for a time. 
The ready-made method of relieving the 
straits of poverty in college and after 
college is teaching ; and when one has 
once entered into the profession of teach- 
ing, it is easy to stay. 

It is noted that Williams has furnished 
eleven distinguished physicians and the 
University of Pennsylvania thirty-four. 
The explanation of such a difference lies 



iSo VVITIJIX COLLEGE WALLS. 

probably in the fact that Philadelphia, the 
site of the University, above every other 
place in America is distinguished for its 
Medical Schools. The University of 
Pennsylvania itself is probably more dis- 
tinguished by reason of its School of 
Medicine than by its undergraduate de- 
partment. Therefore it is not unnatural 
for its bachelors to enter the School of 
Medicine. No such condition obtains at 
Williams. And it may be remarked in 
general that differences of condition are 
a chief element in explaining these differ- 
ences of results. It is also possible that 
these figures may warrant the remark 
that wherever a college is found in which 
there is one man of special strength or 
eminence the graduates naturally turn 
toward that profession or work in which 
this strength is of peculiar worth. 

It therefore does not seem too much 
to say that the American college has 
profoundly influenced American life. It 
has not been the mother of great move- 



PRE-EMINENCE OE THE GRADUATE, l8l 



ments, like Oxford, but it has been the 
mother of great men, Hke Cambridge. 
It has not made great soldiers or sailors, 
great artists or inventors ; but it has con- 
tributed vastly toward the worth of the 
more considerable elements of thought 
and cliaracter. It has not created poets, 
but it has enlarged the vision of the poet 
and sweetened his song. It has not 
created historians, but it has given to 
the writer of history a subject, taught 
him to investigate, to weigh evidence, to 
write with power. If its influence has not 
touched certain eminent preachers, it has 
added to the knowledge and disciplined 
the powers of thousands of clergymen. 
It has brought and is daily bringing a 
larger offering to the editorial desk, the 
lawyer's office, the medical clinic. 

The noble words of Newman one may, 
with certain changes, apply to the Amer- 
ican college : A college training is ^' the 
great ordinary means to a great but 
ordinary end ; it aims at raising the in- 



1 82 WITH IX COLLEGE WALLS. 

tellectual tone of society, at cultivating 
the public mind, at purifying the national 
taste, at supplying true principles to 
popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to pop- 
ular aspiration, at giving enlargement and 
sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facili- 
tating the exercise of political power and 
refining the intercourse of private life. 
It is the education which gives a man 
a clear conscious view of his own opinions 
and judgments, a truth in developing 
them, an eloquence in expressing them, 
and a force in urging them. It teaches 
him to see things as they are, to go right 
to the point, to disentangle a skein of 
thought, to detect what is sophistical and 
to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares 
him to fill any post w^ith credit, and to 
master any subject with facility. He is 
at home in any society, he has common 
ground with every class ; he knows when 
to speak and when to be silent ; he is 
able to converse, he is able to listen ; he 
can ask a question pertinently, and give 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE GRADUATE, 1 83 

a lesson seasonably; he is ever ready, yet 
never in the way ; he is a pleasant com- 
panion, and a comrade you can depend 
upon ; he knows when to be serious and 
when to trifle, and he has a sure tact 
which enables him to trifle with graceful- 
ness and to be serious with effect. He 
has the repose of a mind which lives in 
itself, while it lives in the world, and 
which has resources for its happiness at 
home when it cannot go abroad. He has 
a gift which serves him in public, and 
supports him in retirement, without which 
good fortune is but vulgar, and with 
•which failure and disappointment have a 
charm." "^ 

It is significant that we call the college 
not abmis pater but alma viatcr. She 
gives to us intellectual life and cradles 
that life in its first feebleness. It is almost 
as rare to find a son complaining of his 
college as it is to find him complaining 



•x- 



Idea of a University, pp. 177, 17S. 



1 84 WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS, 

of his first home. Happy the man 
who has two mothers whom he rev- 
erences ! Old President Quincy of Har- 
vard said that a man got a good deal 
out of coUege if he just rubbed his 
shoulders against the college buildings. 
But he certainlv does not cret much in 
this way in comparison with what he 
gets b}' rubbing his head against the 
cases in the library. For to the true 
man of alert intellect, pure heart, and 
strong will, the college represents a new 
birth and a new life. College is simply 
another name for Opportunity: Oppor> 
tunity, widest, deepest, highest, richest. • 



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DR. JOSIAH STRONG'S NBW BOOK, 

THE NEW ERA. By Dr. Josiah Strong, author of **Oui 

Country." 400 pages. Library Edition, cloth, gilt top, 

$1.50; plain cloth, 75 cents; paper, 35 cents. 

Contents. — I. The Nineteenth Century one of Preparation. 

II. The Destiny of the Race. III. The Contribution made by the 

Three Great Races of Antiquity. IV. The Contribution made by 

the Anglo-Saxon. V. The Authoritative Teacher. VI. The 

Two Fundamental Laws of Christ. VII. Popular Discontent. 

VIII. The Problem of the Country. IX. The Problem of the 

City. X. The Separation of the Masses from the Church. XL 

The Mission of the Church. XIL The Necessity of New 

Methods. XIII. Necessity of Personal Contact. XIV. Necessity 

of Co-operation. XV. The Two Great Principles Applied to the 

Two Great Problems. XVI. An Enthusiasm for Humanity. 

*' 'The New Era' is a mighty book."— Pres. C. F. Thwing, 
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. 

**It is a glorious book. It surpasses even his first book, 
and ought to have millions of readers." — Rev. Theodore 

L. CUYLER, D.D. 

** Ought to be read by everybody interested in the advance- 
ment of the race." — iVew York Observer, 

"Ought to be distributed in every church, every Sunday- 
school, and religious convention." — Evangelisty N. V. 

*' We have found the * New Era' abounding in facts that 
are food for the thought of every teacher, preacher, public 
speaker, and of evey man of any influence in social, business, 
or political life. It is a book that it pays to read, and to read 
carefully. — Albany Evening Journal. 

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BAKER & TAYLOR CO.'S PUBLICATIONS, 

OUR COUNTRY : Its Present Crisis and its Pos- 
sible Future. By Rev. Josiah Strong, D.D. 
12mo, 275 pp., paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 
Revision based on the Census of 1890. A new edi- 
tion (160th thousand). 

The many tbousauds who read the earlier editions of this 
book, and were moved by its striking portrayal of our relig- 
ious, social, and economic condition and tendencies, will learn 
with interest that the author has availed himself of the latest 
statistics of the Census of 1890 to make a revision of his work, 
which causes it to show the changes of the last ten years, and 
to picture the actual situation of to-day. The matter of the 
book has been increased one third, and a map and diagram 
forcibly illustrate some of the more startling statistical facts 
and comparisons. 

** This volume is a storehouse of information. We recall no 
recent volume which has so much packed into it of value for 
the minister, the editor, the teacher, and in general, the patriot, 
as this little volume on 'Our Country.'" — Christian Union. 

** Its facts are collated and marshalled ^^ith rare skill. It is 
a powerful and patriotic book. It stirs the blood ; it warms ; 
it inspires ; it thrills and it instructs. It ought to be read by 
every citizen of the Republic ; it will be read by all our people 
who wish to keep abreast of needful knowledge regarding our 
coiuitry. " — Christian Inquirer. 

" If the means were at our command, we know of no sei*vice 
we could perform more practical and effective for the cause of 
truth and righteousness, than to place a copy of * Our Country ' 
in the hands of every man and woman in the land." — Christian 
at Work. 

" Words are feeble in the recommendation of this book. It 
enlightens, siirs. quickens, and makes the blood boil with 
patriotic zeal and Christian vehemence." — Pulpit Treasury. 

•' No publication of the present decade has awakened a more 
profound and intelligent interest, b^ its present form, and it 
is still compact and easily haiftdled, v:e again commend it to 
all Christian and patriotic AniGrjr,an citizens.'* — New York 
Observer. 

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BAKER & TAYLOR CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
THREE PULPIT AND PASTORATE BOOKS. 

THE DIVINE ART OF PREACHING. By Rev. 

Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 

Contents. — 1. The Sermon as an lutellectiial Product. 
II. The Preacher amoug His Books III. The Preacher 
with His Themes. IV. The Preacher Training His Memory. 
V. The Twin Laws of the Sermon. VI. Types of Sermon 
Structure. VII. The Preacher among the Mysteries. VIIL 
The Preacher among the Critics. IX. The Preacher with 
His Bible. X. The Preacher in His Pulpit. XI. The 
Preacher among Snares. XH. The Preacher among His 
People. Xni. The Preacher Communing with the Spirit. 

" It contains the freshest thoughts of one of the leading 
pieachers of the world, on a subject of deep interest to min- 
isters everywhere " — Cumberland Presbyterian. 

HOW TO BE A PASTOR. By Rev. Theodore 

CUYLER, D.D. 

Contents. — L Lnportance of Pastoral Labor. II. Pas- 
toral Visits. HI. Visitation of the Sick— Funeral Services. 
IV. Treatment of the Troubled. V. How to Have a Work- 
ing Church. VI Training Converts. YII. Prayer-meetings. 
VHI. A Model Prayer-meeting. IX. Revivals. X. Drawing 
t lie Bow at a Venture. XI. Where to be a Pastor. XII. Joys 
of the Christian Ministry. 

*'Tbe fruit of large native sense, long experience, wide 
observation, and devout consecration." — Congregationalist. 

THE WORKING CHURCH. By Rev. Charles F. 
Thwing, D.D. 

I. The Church nnd the Pastor. II. Tiie Character of 
Church Work. HI. The Worth and Worthlessness of 
Methods. IV. Among the Children. V. Among the Young 
People. VI. Among Business Men. VII. From the Business 
Point of View. VIII. Two Special Agencies. IX. The 
Treatment of Strangers X. The Unchurched. XI. Duties 
TowardiS Benevolence. XH. The Rewards of Christian Work. 
XDL In the Country Town. 

'* Every chapter is full of pith, bristling with points, wise, 
sound, and practical." — The Evangelist. 

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BAKER & TAYLOR CO:S PUBLIC ATIONS, 



TWO BOOKS ON ART. 

CRAYON PORTRAITURE. Complete Instructions 
for Making Crayon Portraits on Crayon Paper and 
on Platinum, Silver, and Bromide Enlargements. 
Also, Directions for the Use of Transparent Liquid 
Water-colors and for Making French Crystals. By 
J. A. Barhydt. 12mo, cloth, illustrated, revised 
and enlarged edition; paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

A carefull}' prepared band-book for professional and ama- 
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explanation of details as to fuinish to those who desiie to take 
up crayon work a full knowledge of all tbe materials required 
and tbeir use and manipulation, togetber witb all tbe meibods 
and processes employed. Tbe coloring of pbotogiapbs, engrav- 
ings, and pbotogravures witb Liquid Water-colors and tbe 
making of Fiencli Crystals are also fully treated. 

Tbe autbor's successfully accomplisbed intention is to fur- 
nisb a manual tbat wall enable tbe student to undertake tbe 
making of crayon portraits for a livelibood or to gratif}^ his 
taste as an anuiteur. 

AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. A Practical Guide 
for the Beginner. By W. I. Lincoln Adams, Editor 
of " The Photographic Times," " The American 
Annual of Photography," "The Photographic In- 
structor," etc., etc. Illustrated. Paper, 50 cents ; 
cloth, $1.00. 

A treatise for tbe amateur, by one wbose experience of, and 
immediate contact with, tbe wants of tbose wbo are using tbe 
camera in and out of doois especiall3^ fit bim to prepare a 
bawd-book tbat will both serve as a guide to tbe ordinary work, 
and will introduce tbe reader to new fields of interest. 

Contents. — I. Apparatus. 11. In tbe Field. III. In tbe 
Dark Room. IV. Printing and Toning. V. Portraiture. 
YL Instantaneous Pbotograpby. VH. Flasb-ligbt Pbotog- 
rapby. VIII. Ortbocbromatic or Color-sensitive Pbotogra- 
\)\\j. IX. Composite Pbotograpby. X. The " Fatbers of 
Pbotograpby." Appendix, Tables, Formulae, etc. 

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'WAVERLEY NOVELS. 

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. By Sir Walter 
Scott. Centenary Edition, in 25 volumes. Illus- 
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tional copyright notes from the author s pen, not 
hitherto published, besides others by the editor, 
the late David Laing, LL.D. With a general 
Index, and separate Indices and Glossaries. Sold 
only in sets, in boxes. 12mo, cloth, extra gilt top, 
$31.25; half calf, extra, $68.75; half morocco, $68.75. 

This is generally Jicknowledged to be llie best Library 
Edition of iScott's novels in the market. Tlie ialf calf and 
half-niorocco bindings are elegant examples of tlie binders' 
art. while the dark blue ch)tli, wiili gilt top, similr.r to the 
Riverside Edition of Emerson, makes a plain but beautiful 
binding. 

*' A handsome and convenient set, neatly bound in dark- 
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and the illustrations are numerous." — New York N(ttion. 

** The edition is an adniir;d)le one. It is one of tlie best 
editions available for comfortable reading." — New York 
Tribune. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE WAVERLEY. The Six 
Most Popular of Scott's Novels : Waverley — 
Guy Mannering — Bride of Lammermoor — Ivanhoe 
— Kenil worth — Quentin Durward. Half leather- 
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This set has been formed of the half-dozen books which the 
experience of librarians has shown to be the most popiilai- of 
Scott's Novels. The binding is very attractive, and furnishes 
the reader a thoroughly representative selection from the great 
novelist's works. 

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BAKER & TAYLOR CO.'S PUBLICATION. 
BOOKS ON SHORT-HAND AND TYPE^WRITING. 

HUMPHREYS INTERLINEAR SHORT-HAND 
(Pitman Phonography), for Use in Schools and 
Colleges. A complete and conveniently arranged 
text-book,. treating exhaustively of the principles 
of phonetic short-hand in their application to all 
branches of verbatim reporting, and containing 
the latest modifications known to the art, with 
special adaptation to self-instruction. By F. S. 
Humphrey. Part I, 8vo, cloth, $1.50; Part II, 8vo, 
cloth, $1.50. Parts I and II (in one volume com- 
plete), 8vo, cloth, $2.50. 

" You have made the study of phonograph}'- so easy that any 
person who cannot learn with the aid of these lessons ou2:ht 
not to take up the study." — W. 0. Wyckoff, President Neto 
York State Stenograpliers' Associntlon, of the firm of Wyckoff, 
Seamans & Benedict, Proprietors Remington Standard Type- 
Writer. 

'' Your Interlinear Lessons are almost perfect. It is certainly 
the best scheme of presenting phonography that has been pub- 
lished." — Alfred Day, Principal Phonographic Department 
Spencer ian Business College, Cleceland, Ohio. 

MANUAL OF TYPE-WRITING. Business Letter- 
Writer and Exercises for Phonographic Practice. 
By F. S. Humphrey. 8vo, cloth, $1.50. 

This book gives the reader a peifect mastery of the writing 
machine, and acquaints him with the proper form and make-up 
of all tlie kinds of writing adapted to it, by giving abundant 
examples of mercantile corresj>ondence. legal business, theat- 
rical, legislative, judicial, and miscellaneous forms, etc. It 
also contains an admirable collection of the most frequently 
occurring commercial, legal, and legislative phrases, rules for 
spelling, punctuation, etc. 

'* It is exactly what is wanted in every short-hand school.'* 
— W. H. Slocum, Official Stenographer , Sujrreme Court, Eighth 
Judicial Dist., J^. Y. 

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BAKER & TAYLOR CO/S PUBLICATIONS. 
TWO USEFUL WORKS OlST GERMAN. 

LETTERS FOR SELF -INSTRUCTION IN THE 
GERMAN LANGUAGE. By Solomon Deutsch, 
Ph.D. 2 vols., 8 vo, cloth, $5.00. Each volume also 
sold separately. Vol. I. First Course, Grammati- 
cal; 8vo, cloth, 480 pp., $2.50. Vol. II. Second 
Course, Idiomatic and Literary; 8vo, cloth, 364 
pp., $2.50. 

This is an elaborate work which perfectly accomplishes the 
task of making it possible for an English student, entirely 
without other aid, to master every detail of the pronunciation, 
grammar, and idioms of the German language, and at the 
same time to become familiar with its conversational forms, 
its proverbs, and classical sayings. 

Mr. Charles Dudley Warner fitly characterized the book 
when he said of it : " The method is scientific, but is perfectly 
intelligible. The author is thorough ; in order to be easy he 
cannot be brief ; he explains carefully." 

DRILLMASTER IN GERMAN. Based on System- 
atic Gradation and Steady Repetition. By Solo- 
mon Deutsch, A.M., Ph.D., author of " Letters for 
Self-instruction in German," etc. 12mo, cloth, 469 
pp., $1.50. 

The subject-matter of the book is divided into twenty-four 
sections, consisting of numbered paragraphs containing Ger- 
\ man sentences on the left page, and the exact idiomatic 
English equivalent on the right page. Each of these sections 
of fifty paragraphs is followed b}^ the same number of para- 
graphs in English, coutaining drill exercises for oral and 
written review. In these no new terms are employed, but 
merely modifications and variations of the sentences already 
given. The grammatical rules deduced from the model sen- 
tences which form the bulk of the book appear in copious foot- 
notes and in the appendix. The latter also contains synoptical 
tables, giviug a general view of the inflections, and an alpha- 
betical list of the prepositions, with their idiomatic use. An 
index, alphabetically arranged, directs the student at once to 
the resources of the book on any given point. 

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REV. DR. TODD'S BOOKS. 

TODD^S INDEX EERUM. By John Todd, D.D. Re- 
vised and Improved by Rev. J. M. Hubbard. 
Quarto, half leather, $2.50. 

The Index is iuteuded to supply to those who are careful 
enough readers to make notes of what they miy wish to use 
again, a book especially adapted to that purpose by a system 
of paging by letters, each page having a margin for the inser- 
tion of the words most expressive of the subject of the notes. 
It contains 280 pages of quarto size, ruled and lettered, and in 
the liands of an industrious reader, forms, in the course of 
years, a perfect index of his reading, as valuable as he may 
choose to make it complete. 

THE STUDENT'S MANUAL. By John Todd, D.D. 
12mo, cloth, $1.00. 

A work of real worth for students and those who desire to 
become such in the best sense of the word. It is written with 
force and that convincing quality which creates an inclination 
on the part of the reader to adopt as his own that line body of 
rules and principles which it directly inculcates. As a forma- 
tive book for the college period of life, it is unequalled in our 
literature. It has received the universal approbation of those 
who are interested in the best education. 

" We have no hesitation in saying that this book should be 
diligently read by every student. It is an eminently sensible 
and stimulating book, and its advice is such as students would 
do well to heed." — Chicago Interior. 

*' This book has done an immense amount of good in its 
(lay, and is destined to accomplish still more in its reissued 
form. It is the most sensible and attractive work of the kind 
in existence." — Utica Herald. 

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